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The Trolls Who Came In From The Cold
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) ^ | March 16, 2015 | Viktor Rezunkov

Posted on 03/16/2015 11:07:08 PM PDT by WhiskeyX

ST. PETERSBURG -- Last May, Tatiana N decided she wanted a higher salary than the average journalist can expect.

After responding to an advertisement in the popular HeadHunter job-search website, she became a Kremlin-paid Internet troll. Tatiana -- who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that her last name not be used -- worked out of a 2,500-square-meter warehouse in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.

The job paid 40,000 rubles a month, significantly more than the 25,000-30,000 most journalists make. But it came, she said, "with pain."

Tatiana joined a round-the-clock operation in which an army of trolls disseminated pro-Kremlin and anti-Western talking points on blogs and in the comments sections of news websites in Russia and abroad.

The operation, Internet Research, is financed through a holding company headed by President Vladimir Putin's "personal chef," Evgeny Prigozhin.

"So you write, write, write, from the point of view of anyone," Tatiana, 22, says.

"You could be [posing as] a housewife who bakes dumplings and suddenly decides: 'I have an opinion about what Putin said! And this action by Vladimir Vladimirovich saves Russia."

The roughly 400 employees work 12-hour shifts and are split into various departments. Some focus on writing up themes and assignments, others concentrate on commenting, and others work on graphics for social media.

One department is devoted entirely to maintaining blogs on Livejournal that intersperse banal posts with rough-edged pro-Kremlin propaganda.

The daily assignments -- shown in a document first published on March 11 by independent St. Petersburg newspaper My Region -- are usually drawn directly from pro-Kremlin media and go into sometimes excruciating detail about the message the bloggers and commenters are supposed to relay.

One assignment instructed trolls how to frame the February 27 assassination of opposition figure Boris Nemtsov:....

(Excerpt) Read more at rferl.org ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: evgenyprigozhin; internet; internetresearch; propaganda; putin; russia; troll; trolls
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1 posted on 03/16/2015 11:07:09 PM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: WhiskeyX

I would say lots of people are being paid to blog... but in most cases their employers don’t know it. :)


2 posted on 03/16/2015 11:14:45 PM PDT by marron
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To: WhiskeyX

Sweat shop propaganda


3 posted on 03/16/2015 11:16:11 PM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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To: marron

lol


4 posted on 03/16/2015 11:19:52 PM PDT by Pelham (The refusal to deport is defacto amnesty)
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To: Pelham

U got THAT right.


5 posted on 03/16/2015 11:26:27 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: WhiskeyX

I think the Putinista platoon here is unpaid; they’re like the communist fellow travelers in the days of the Soviet Bloc. Angry with their our country and keen to get back at the USA, they’d ignorantly praise a foreign despot or go to that nation and call it a wonderful place. Paul Hollander called them Political Pilgrims. I believe the root cause is the same for these folks who, because they hate Obama’s policies and think Putin is virile and Christian (perhaps more than them, though), start to believe, without evidence (unless you count RT TV), that Putin’s and Russia are better than the USA. They shift their loyalty. They’re dupes in the sense of the old usage.


6 posted on 03/16/2015 11:26:44 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (Against Obama. Against Putin. Pro-freedom. Pro-US Constitution.)
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To: WhiskeyX

Didn’t Cass Sunstein setup a similar operation with Obama staffers?


7 posted on 03/16/2015 11:27:17 PM PDT by montag813 (Pray for Israel)
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To: marron

I think political operations involving trolls supporting the Uniparty Dems and Reps exist in this country.......


8 posted on 03/16/2015 11:44:58 PM PDT by Nextrush (OBAMACARE IS A BAILOUT FOR THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY)
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To: WhiskeyX

They aren’t as good as the pro-China trolls.


9 posted on 03/16/2015 11:56:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: Nextrush

“I think political operations involving trolls supporting the Uniparty Dems and Reps exist in this country.......”

Every few days, this SAME PERSON posts some article about this, usually from a known propaganda source.

Yet, it FAILS to mention the “Sophisticated Social Media Campaign” of the Right Sector’s “EuroMaidanPR” internet trolling operation that CNN was cheering, just three weeks before the Kiev coup. Or the Omidyar Network-run, Soros-financed “Tech Camp” program, that in the months leading up to the Euromaidan coup, was training Kiev internet trolls by the hundreds.

IMO, that’s just hypocrisy, and we’ve been seeing this BS from the same few ID’s for over a YEAR now.

In the new century, Internet opinion trolling is just a fact of life now.

The “organization formerly known as ACORN” was openly advertising for “Internet Opinion Engineers” on Craigslist, across the country, in early 2012 to reelect Obama. they did the same in 2008, there were several articles posted on FR about it.

There are many firms in DC and New York that specialize in Internet Opinion trolling, especially for Democrat Pols.

There have been articles posted on FR about the Obama Administration seeking to create an Internet trolling operation to counter ISIS.

It’s the way of the world now. And we have to filter through it for ourselves.


10 posted on 03/16/2015 11:57:28 PM PDT by tcrlaf (They told me it could never happen in America. And then it did....)
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To: tcrlaf
Personally, I am amused by the unsourced stuff you post. Sure sign it comes straight from the Kremlin.
11 posted on 03/17/2015 12:19:06 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: WhiskeyX

So is there any comparable article about the hundreds of trolls employed by Obama’s propaganda operation, “Organizing for Action,” and other left wing organizations?


12 posted on 03/17/2015 12:50:04 AM PDT by kaehurowing
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To: kaehurowing

Well, I guess that makes what the Russians are doing ok, then. /s


13 posted on 03/17/2015 1:07:20 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: kaehurowing

“So is there any comparable article about the hundreds of trolls employed by Obama’s propaganda operation, “Organizing for Action,” and other left wing organizations?”

See:

Soros Trolls Hit Bottom of Barrel

02/02/2014 4:23:33 AM PST · by Kaslin · 7 replies
Townhall.com ^ | February 2, 2014 | John Ransom
Anyway, I wouldn’t want to go back and live in Chicago no matter how big a mansion I owned, especially if, like Obama, I lived in Hyde Park. And it’s not likely I’d ever go back unless I went there to clean it up. None of that for Obama however. “It could just be a diabolical, cruel rumor meant to hurt Chicago residents who are proud of the first couple’s $1.8 million Hyde Park Georgian Revival mansion and history in the community,” reported the liberal blog PolicyMic during the reelection campaign when Obama wasn’t sure he’d be back in the...


14 posted on 03/17/2015 1:21:15 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: tcrlaf
And we have to filter through it for ourselves.

Congratulations for being the most cluelessly ironic troll on the entire Internet. You ARE the noise that the rest of us have to filter out.

15 posted on 03/17/2015 1:26:09 AM PDT by FredZarguna ("He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man." -- Thomas Jefferson)
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To: elhombrelibre

Some of the Putinista Internet Trolls posting on Freerepublic are paid trolls working for Internet Research in St. Petersburg, Russia; i.e. the subjects of this very article.

Others are unpaid Communist volunteers posting from all around the world.


16 posted on 03/17/2015 1:36:49 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: WhiskeyX
Is there any doubt, is there any doubt, is there any doubt that this is happening in the USSA as well?
17 posted on 03/17/2015 1:52:47 AM PDT by Company Man (Always proofread to make sure you haven't words out.)
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To: WhiskeyX

Bookmark


18 posted on 03/17/2015 2:04:46 AM PDT by Pajamajan ( Pray for our nation. Thank the Lord for everything you have. Don't wait. Do it today.)
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To: WhiskeyX
I had pondered about this for a while. I think that some of our "trolls" simply have relatives/family on the other side of the (ahem) Iron Curtain. So when they call granmama to ask, "what's up?" they don't realize that all granmama can talk about is what she's hearing on Russian state-owned media (because she has no other options).

And who would expect that their own granmama is lying to them? (She's just repeating the lies).

19 posted on 03/17/2015 2:10:50 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: tcrlaf

But you post for Putin without pay, or do you get paid to be his apologist?


20 posted on 03/17/2015 2:11:58 AM PDT by elhombrelibre (Against Obama. Against Putin. Pro-freedom. Pro-US Constitution.)
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