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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.

11 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. It's 1930s retro! by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:It's 1930s retro! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    2. Re:It's 1930s retro! by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The parent post should not be off-topic. We don't have a choice except to talk about this on unrelated threads, precisely because Dice is suppressing stories about it!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    3. Re:It's 1930s retro! by JazzLad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ^ This. Unfortunately, Slashdot editors have unlimited mod points, so I expect your post and this one to get modded into oblivion. My karma can take it, but I think it's a shame that what would have been 'the big story' today was suppressed by Dice. If Soylent, et al weren't so lame, I'd have jumped ship, but /. is still one of the best sources for discussion.

      Say what you (not you specifically) will about /. going downhill, there's still much good signal in the noise - just hard when the corporate overlords expect you to not look behind the curtain.

      --
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
    4. Re:It's 1930s retro! by dcollins117 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The the most important issue of today will not be appearing on the front page and that is very sad. This used to be the place where we could come together and share a common bond. Those days are gone.

  2. LOL ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, internet trolls you

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. Not really a troll... by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:Not really a troll... by OzPeter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why did Dice buy Slashdot?
      So they could suppress discussions about their own scandals!
      SHAME ON YOU DICE!

      Are you trolling?

      No, he is not trolling, he is merely pointing out the power of propaganda as mentioned by the OP. I believe it should be more considered irony given the context off this story

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  4. Troll v Troll by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  5. Russian trolls are very active by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. Dice Company responds: (first draft) by Earthquake+Retrofit · · Score: 5, Funny

    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