Russia Hires Trolls To Patrol Media Comments ---
tags: pychological warfare, Russian incidents, disinformation
Russia and Iran manage farms of trolls to promote their views on internet sites. Is Alex Jones who accuses the west of Infowars against US citizens and Russia just a part of Russia's infowar? Are all wacky 9-11 and JFK style conspiracy theories just Russian and Islamist propoganda?
What of PressTV, RT and Veterans Today which promotes exactly the same disinformation and conspiracy theories?
*Cases
- Boris Nemtsov was killed in Moscow in late February, the Serbian trolls were quick to react. "Who is to gain from this assassination but America? It must have been CIA," was the dominant mantra widespread view in Serbia that the
- Columbia Chemical hoax tracked to “troll farm” dubbed the Internet Research Agency
- Crimea: Putin was right to annex Crimea.
- Guardian in UL reports that its “moderators, who deal with 40,000 comments a day, believe there is an orchestrated pro-Kremlin campaign.” “…the quantity of pro-Kremlin trolling on this topic … which has been documented extensively since 2012 as a real and insidious threat to online communities of idea and debate, has rendered commenting on these articles all but meaningless, and a worthless exercise in futility and frustration for anyone not already being mind-controlled by the Kremlin.”
- Kiev regime is neo-Nazi (also US Veterans Today)
- MH-17 shot down by Ukraine missiles or SU-25 or Israeli F-15
- MH-370 hijacked by Israel or USA
- Total CEO accident / assassination Russia Propaganda Wall Street Journal CEO of oil comapny rare ally of Russia was killed when his plane slammed into a snowplow... blamed on CIA
*Timeline
JUNE 18, 2015 - 13:13 CONTEXT
Pro-Kremlin trolls exploit Facebook’s block policy to attack rival bloggers Prominent bloggers claim their accounts are being routinely blocked after orchestrated complaints from Russia’s cyber army, wrote Dmitriy Volchek, RFE/FL. On June 4, Ukrainian journalist and activist Andriy Kapustin posted on Facebook a selfie with former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who’s now governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region. “I’m interested to see if once again the bots from Olgino will once again file fresh complaints that this is pornography,” he wrote…
The Agency Stages Fake USA Disaster Stories - The New York Times The New York Times Jun 7, 2015 - Hundreds of Twitter accounts were documenting a disaster right down the road. ... It was all fake: the screenshot, the videos, the photographs. ..... Russia'sinformation war might be thought of as the biggest trolling operation in ...
Troll farm in Russia was behind Columbia Chemical hoax News.com.au Jun 4, 2015 - Columbia Chemical hoax tracked to “troll farm” dubbed the Internet Research Agency ... and videos of what appeared to be another unfolding emergency.... hour shifts creating fake profiles and posting comments in support of ... September 11 when hundreds of tweets from dozens of accounts included eyewitness details of an explosion at the Columbia Chemicals plant in the US state of Louisiana.
“Are we in danger because of this explosion? What about toxic fallout? What should we do?” one user wrote.
“How far do you think a gas can spread away from #ColumbianChemicals?” Arnold Evans asked.
“How many miles from New Orleans is that damn plant #ColumbianChemicals? Do we have time to evacuate?!” Elizabeth Newton wrote.
On YouTube, CCTV video showed the hint of a flash in the background of a Louisiana petrol station with a timestamp reading 11-09-2014.
A picture was posted of the CNN homepage which featured the chemical plant explosion as its main story. But it was all fake. There was no explosion: it was an elaborate hoax doctored by a team of people employed to create havoc online. As The New York Times revealed this week, the Columbia Chemicals hoax was eventually traced to Russia and a group called the Internet Research Agency, a known “troll farm”. known to push Kremlin propaganda on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and local social network VKontakte. In March, after Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered, the agency left comments on Russian news outlets suggesting the opposition itself had set up his murder
Russian 'Troll Farm' Spreads Fake News About United States The Christian Post Jun 10, 2015 - Going by the innocuous sounding "Internet Research Agency," the "TrollFactory" is located in an austere, probably Soviet-era gray cement ...
JUNE 03, 2015 - 13:35 CONTEXT
Meet the ‘Kremlin trolls’, the humans behind Putin’s propaganda machinery
The operation that has worried the EU is drawing Serbia away from its EU membership path, convinced people that Ukraine is neo-Nazi and Putin was right to annex Crimea. Deep inside a four-storey marble building in St. Petersburg, hundreds of workers tap away at computers on the frontlines of an information war, say those who have been inside. Known as “Kremlin trolls,” the men and women work 12-hour shifts around…
MAY 29 2015 Russia Steps up Propaganda Push with Online 'Kremlin Trolls' by IULIIA SUBBOTOVSKA, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS four-story building known as the "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, Russia, Deep inside a four-story marble building in St. Petersburg, hundreds of workers tap away at computers on the front lines of an information war, say those who have been inside. Known as "Kremlin trolls," the men and women work 12-hour shifts around the clock, flooding the Internet with propaganda aimed at stamping President Vladimir Putin's world vision on Russia, and the world. program is drawing Serbia away from its proclaimed EU membership path and closer to the Russian orbit, and is targeting Germany, the United States and other Western powers. ...European Union.. draw up a blueprint for fighting Russia's disinformation campaign, although details have not yet been released.
... Boris Nemtsov was killed in Moscow in late February, the Serbian trolls were quick to react. "Who is to gain from this assassination but America? It must have been CIA," was the dominant mantra widespread view in Serbia that the Kiev regime is neo-Nazi and that Putin was right to annex Crimea.
MAY 19, 2015 - 00:35 CONTEXT
Anatomy of an Info-War: How Russia’s Propaganda Machine Works, and How to Counter It
Russia’s propaganda assault on the West is well-organized and well-funded. However, it is also predictable, and this is its weakness. Executive Summary One of Russia’s great successes in its campaign around Ukraine has been what Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss call its weaponization of information. It uses a network of officials, journalists, sympathetic commentators and internet trolls to create an alternative reality in which all truth is relative, and no…
flood websites with pro-Russian propaganda - Daily Express
Daily ExpressApr 4, 2015 - PARANOID Russian President Vladimir Putin employs hundreds of ...Putin's 'troll army': bloggers forced to 'flood websites with pro-Russian propaganda ...One blogger who wrote fake posts for the LiveJournal website said she was paid 45,000 roubles (£520) a month and was instructed not to tell any of her friends about the job. had to write ‘ordinary posts’ about making cakes or music tracks we liked, but then every now and then throw in a political post about how the Kiev government is fascist, or that sort of thing,” she said. had to write ‘ordinary posts’ about making cakes or music tracks we liked, but then every now and then throw in a political post about how the Kiev government is fascist, or that sort of thing,” she said.
Meet the ‘Kremlin trolls’, the humans behind Putin’s propaganda machinery
The operation that has worried the EU is drawing Serbia away from its EU membership path, convinced people that Ukraine is neo-Nazi and Putin was right to annex Crimea. Deep inside a four-storey marble building in St. Petersburg, hundreds of workers tap away at computers on the frontlines of an information war, say those who have been inside. Known as “Kremlin trolls,” the men and women work 12-hour shifts around…
MAY 29 2015 Russia Steps up Propaganda Push with Online 'Kremlin Trolls' by IULIIA SUBBOTOVSKA, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS four-story building known as the "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, Russia, Deep inside a four-story marble building in St. Petersburg, hundreds of workers tap away at computers on the front lines of an information war, say those who have been inside. Known as "Kremlin trolls," the men and women work 12-hour shifts around the clock, flooding the Internet with propaganda aimed at stamping President Vladimir Putin's world vision on Russia, and the world. program is drawing Serbia away from its proclaimed EU membership path and closer to the Russian orbit, and is targeting Germany, the United States and other Western powers. ...European Union.. draw up a blueprint for fighting Russia's disinformation campaign, although details have not yet been released.
... Boris Nemtsov was killed in Moscow in late February, the Serbian trolls were quick to react. "Who is to gain from this assassination but America? It must have been CIA," was the dominant mantra widespread view in Serbia that the Kiev regime is neo-Nazi and that Putin was right to annex Crimea.
MAY 19, 2015 - 00:35 CONTEXT
Anatomy of an Info-War: How Russia’s Propaganda Machine Works, and How to Counter It
Russia’s propaganda assault on the West is well-organized and well-funded. However, it is also predictable, and this is its weakness. Executive Summary One of Russia’s great successes in its campaign around Ukraine has been what Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss call its weaponization of information. It uses a network of officials, journalists, sympathetic commentators and internet trolls to create an alternative reality in which all truth is relative, and no…
Daily ExpressApr 4, 2015 - PARANOID Russian President Vladimir Putin employs hundreds of ...Putin's 'troll army': bloggers forced to 'flood websites with pro-Russian propaganda ...One blogger who wrote fake posts for the LiveJournal website said she was paid 45,000 roubles (£520) a month and was instructed not to tell any of her friends about the job. had to write ‘ordinary posts’ about making cakes or music tracks we liked, but then every now and then throw in a political post about how the Kiev government is fascist, or that sort of thing,” she said. had to write ‘ordinary posts’ about making cakes or music tracks we liked, but then every now and then throw in a political post about how the Kiev government is fascist, or that sort of thing,” she said.
psywar February 14, 2015 Russia Hires Trolls To Patrol Media Comments Economist: Kremlin is also a sophisticated user of the internet and social media. It employs hundreds of “trolls” to garrison the comment sections and Twitter feeds of the West. The point is not so much to promote the Kremlin’s views, but to denigrate opposition figures, and foreign governments and institutions, and to sow fear and confusion.
December 13, 2014 arrest The Unmasking of an Islamic State Twitter Troll HASSAN HASSAN DECEMBER 17, 201 pro-Islamic State Twitter user Shami Witness was one day before an investigation by Channel 4 revealed his true identity. ...“Or are you waiting for [the northern province of] Hasaka to be Arab-free before the faux wailing can begin? Aren’t they Syrians too or is YPG that much venerated that their war crimes can’t be touched.” This was typical Shami Witness — simultaneously defending the Islamic State’s attacks on its enemies, while accusing its critics of violating their principles in failing to do the same. And he was influential: He had gathered over 17,700 followers by the time his identity was uncovered, and a report released in April found that he was followed by two-thirds of foreign fighters on Twitter. Channel 4 investigation discovered, Shami Witness was a 24-year-old executive in Bangalore named Mehdi Masroor Biswas. Mehdi was arrested in his one-room apartment on Dec. 13 and, despite initial confused attempts to deny it, eventually confessed that he ran the account.
Forbes: Russia's Media Trolls:
May 6, 2014 http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhimler/2014/05/06/russias-media-trolls/
Flash forward to today when any semblance of a free press in Russia has been discarded like the stray dogs in Sochi. In March, The New York Times reported how Russia is mounting a “media war” unlike any other since the end of the cold war. Celestine Bohlin wrote:
“The scale of Russia’s propaganda effort in the current crisis has been breathtaking, even by Soviet standards. Facts have been twisted, images doctored (Ukrainians shown as fleeing to Russia were actually crossing the border to Poland), and harsh epithets (neo-Nazis) hurled at the demonstrators in Kiev — who President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia belatedly acknowledged had legitimate gripes against a corrupt and failed government”
Now the Russian government has resorted to paying its supporters to astroturf the comments sections of bona fide news organizations with pro-Russian posts. The Guardian reports that its “moderators, who deal with 40,000 comments a day, believe there is an orchestrated pro-Kremlin campaign.”
This “trolling,” as they call it, has gotten so bad that it prompted one reader to observe:
“…the quantity of pro-Kremlin trolling on this topic … which has been documented extensively since 2012 as a real and insidious threat to online communities of idea and debate, has rendered commenting on these articles all but meaningless, and a worthless exercise in futility and frustration for anyone not already being mind-controlled by the Kremlin.”
something else altogether when a legitimate government purposely deploys deception to influence public opinion. In February 2012 the Guardian reported on Russia’s insidious and opaque efforts to manipulate the media:
”A pro-Kremlin group runs a network of internet trolls, seeks to buy flattering coverage of Vladimir Putin and hatches plans to discredit opposition activists and media, according to private emails allegedly hacked by a group calling itself the Russian arm of Anonymous.”
Mr. Putin may view this as an acceptable practice of modern public relations, but I assure you, it is not. It is dishonest, dangerous, and frankly, evidence that Russia is not yet ready to participate in a civilized society.
In Russia, Trolling Is a Form of Information Warfare - Muftah Jul 18, 2014 - Trolling has emerged as a two-pronged tactic in the government's ... Trolls are paid to post hundreds of comments and maintain multiple Twitter ..Vasily Gatov, a Russian media analyst, echoed this sentiment when he told BuzzFeed, “Armies of bots were ready to participate in media wars.” These “armies” are massive and funded by the Kremlin. According to the BuzzFeed piece, a budget for one trolling agency, the Internet Research Agency, which employs over 600 people, is set to be over $10 million in 2014.
Trolls are paid to post hundreds of comments and maintain multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, which they use to flood the Internet with comments. Oftentimes, the posts are unintelligible. The Washington Post quoted a comment ostensibly left by one bot: “Halloo, egghead! Let’s go! “Oink-oink-oink-oink-oink …” Even if it does not change minds, trolling can be most powerful when it succeeds in shutting down discussions entirely. In some cases, readers choose not to comment on articles out of fear of inflammatory responses.
OCT 9 2013 Russia's Online-Comment Propaganda Army Atlantic It's like writing copy about hair dryers, one comment-shop explains, "The only difference is that this hair dryer is a political one."
OLGA KHAZAN,
Whenever I write about homophobia in Russia, several readers invariably leave comments defending the country's approach to gay rights:.... Elsewhere, like when my articles about opposition figures are translated and posted on Russian news sites, the comments get downright personal and anti-Semitic.
I don't get too worked up—Internet haters gonna hate, as we all know—but given the outlandishness of their responses (even their fellow angry commenters often try to take them down a notch), it leaves me wondering, "Who are these people?" Now, it seems, we have an answer to where some of this acrimony originates. It's of course impossible to tell whose vitriol is genuine and whose is being bankrolled, but at least some anti-Western comments appear to come from staffers the Russian government pays to sit in a room, surf the Internet, and leave sometimes hundreds of postings a day that criticize the country's opposition and promote Kremlin-backed policymakers.
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