Slashdot Mirror
Professional Internet Troll Sues Her Former Employer
baegucb sends a followup to the news from March that professional internet trolls were operating by the hundreds at factories in Russia. A woman hired to be one of these trolls, Lyudmila Savchuk, spoke to the media about her job, which led to her being fired. She's now suing her former employer and providing further details about how they operate. "The 'troll factory' operates based on very weird schemes, but all those firms are connected to each other, even though they are separate legal entities," she said. "I knew it was something bad, but of course I never suspected that it was this horrible and this large-scale." She describes how they flooded comment sections with pro-Putin responses, pushed out over 100 blog posts each shift, and doctored images to suit their employers' needs. Savchuk is now gathering activists to oppose this form of internet propaganda.
Stalin-- uh, I mean Putin -- would be proud of their efforts.
I hope she carries a portable geiger counter. Polonium 241 is nasty stuff.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Why did Dice buy Slashdot?
So they could suppress discussions about their own scandals!
SHAME ON YOU DICE!
In Soviet Russia, internet trolls you
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This looks a lot more like plain old propaganda. It's not really internet trolling in the traditional sense.
Is "internet troll' some sort of clickbait term? We heard it last year for people who were physically stalking women and it didn't make any sense then either.
I read the internet for the articles.
It's amusing that in the comments on this article about pro-Russia propaganda-trolls, most of the comments are by the very pro-Russia propaganda trolls that the article exposes, belittling the article and blaming the west
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If I get hired by these guys, do you think I have a shot at the Slashdot gig?
Imagine getting paid for
* First posts
* In Soviet Russia jokes
* Natalie Portman/Hot grits
* Old Ike stories
A good goatse redirect should pay big bucks!
I kind of have this idea that the comments section on CNN.com or foxnews.com is all troll bots. Right wing troll bots arguing with left wing troll bots arguing with agent provocateur right wing troll bots pretending to be deranged left wingers arguing with agent provocateur left wing troll bots pretending to be deranged right wingers.
Basically, the internet is trolls all the way down.
The alternative, that those are real people expressing their actual opinions, is too horrifying to contemplate.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
are called shills.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
That's why I only read Slashdot. I have it on good authority that we're all nothing but modified chatbots and Markov text generators.
I have seen on various non-tech forums some extremely biased and even absurd views from a very obvious pro-Russian government position. All these accounts seemed to work in unison, with the same talking points and a very clear agenda. The fact that their agenda was so clear and transparent is the reason why many forum patrons call them "putlerbot" and "Kremlin's sockpuppets". I thought that Putin most likely would not waste money on such nonsense, but I did find the comments humorous.
But now I am starting to think that these... "people" aren't just utterly delusional Internet users from Russia, but actual, paid-for, managed and directed sockpuppets.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Not really, no. Russian government shills are only used inside the country, to calm down dissent. They won't do their work on any English language website - what for? Basically, if you don't speak Russian, you won't see them. The only exception might be Serbia, but my guess is, you don't speak Serbian either.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
what term do we use for 'dystopian'?
"News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters" ?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Unless they've been deleted somehow (Slashdot wouldn't do that, would they?), none of the posts prior to yours in this thread appears to be pro-Russian propaganda-trolls. There's a Stalin/Putin comparison (with a OT subthread ranting about Dice), a OT rant about Dice, an "In Soviet Russia" joke, a post distinguishing internet trolling from plain old propaganda (with an OT subthread ranting about Dice), and an AC calling trolling an artform. What's pro-Russian in there?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Already modded so have to be anon.
If you look at any article talking about Russia's invasion of Ukraine you will see the comments infested with Russian trolls based out of St. Petersburg. They use every excuse they are told to use trying to explain away the hundreds of dead Russian soldiers (killed in training accidents over a 2 month period according to them), the amount of brand new equipment the Russian-backed rebels have and continue to get, even if the Ukrainian army never had such equipment (they raided weapons depots and now manufacture tanks, artillery and ammunition on their own despite having almost no manufacturing capabilities), the captured Russian soldiers (they weren't really soldiers. They left the army right before they were captured and were only "vacationing" in Ukraine or "volunteering" to fight which is why they brought along their tanks, artillery and BUK missile systems).
It's quite funny, at time, reading their completely fabricated and unbelievable stories of how everyone but Putin is to blame for Russia's problems. Even when Putin came out and stated categorically he ordered Russian troops to take over Crimea the trolls denied Putin's own words. Apparently not only is everything coming from the West a lie, but so are the words of their dear leader. In their minds, everything is a lie.
I read something the other day which helps to explain the Russian mind set. The Grapes of Wrath was shown as a movie to the Russians many decades ago (30s?). It was supposed to be an exercise in how bad capitalism was. The problem was, at the end of the movie it was shown that even the poorest American could afford to buy their own car so the Russian authorities banned the showing of the movie. They needed to keep up the lie about the evils of the West so like Putin has done by banning the mention of how many Russian soldiers have died during the invasion of Ukraine, including preventing the mothers and fathers from speaking about their dead sons, Russia needs to keep its people believing in lies because if they knew the truth they would realize how backwards their country is and why they will never be taken seriously by anyone.
You misspelled "armature".
Not really, no. Russian government shills are only used inside the country, to calm down dissent.
How in the hell do you know this? Is it more likely that hundreds/thousands of Russian citizens are utterly delusional to the point of insanity, all the while being perfectly Internet savvy, or that there are propaganda firms working for Putin to control the Western public opinion regarding things such as Ukraine? I find the latter much more likely.
The only exception might be Serbia, but my guess is, you don't speak Serbian either.
Tu si se zajebo. Sasvim solidno "citam" srpski i ostale bivse Yugo jezike, osim makedonskog.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Dice is currently involved in transitioning SourceForge's magnetic niches. In order to synergize such a leading-edge platform while integrating web-enabled e-tailers and benchmarking frictionless vortals we had to postpone synthesizing out-of-the-box convergence.
I hope this clears things up.
Fifty years of Yippie! 1968-2018
I suspect the parent means the comments attached to TFA, not the comments here at Slashdot.
Astroturfers != trolls.
This is as stupid as every Fox or CNN commentary that calls anyone posting anything 'naughty' or bothersome a troll, or anyone under 30 as "gen-x".
Christ, people. If this site can't get it straight, what hope do we have that anyone else would?
-Styopa