Posted on 03/26/2015 7:55:01 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
More and more, posts and commentaries on the Internet in Russia and even abroad are generated by professional trolls, many of whom receive a higher-than-average salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online.
There are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia's most famous "troll factory," the Internet Research center, an unassuming building on St. Petersburg's Savushkina Street, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work grinding, 12-hour shifts in exchange for 40,000 rubles ($700) a month or more.
St. Petersburg blogger Marat Burkhard spent two months working at Internet Research in the department tasked with clogging the forums on Russia's municipal websites with pro-Kremlin comments. In the following interview, he describes a typical day and the type of assignments he encountered.
(Excerpt) Read more at rferl.org ...
Nice rant...
“I don’t see you making any comments on topic,....”
Your comment is a false allegation which you are using as a strawman argument. The news story calls attention to the fact of how Putin’s Russian government is covertly employing Russians within Russia to conduct a war of false propaganda and disinformation against the United States, NATO, and other nations the Russian regime has chosen to treat as enemies. As many other FR participants have observed, you and other posters have demonstrated a habit of responding to this story and most every other like news story about these covert Russian propagandists with comments that have little to nothing to do with these covert Russian propagandists, but instead have everything to do with a Tu Quogue and/or ad hominem attack against the poster, the United States, the allies of the United States, U.S. sources of propaganda, and just about anything else imaginable that is derogatory of the United States so long as it changes the subject of the news article and subverts or suppresses a discussion and criticism of Putin and/or Russia.
“You consistently accuse other FReepers of being Russian trolls.”
That is yet another false allegation which you use as a strawman argument. I have been at pains to carefully describe some participants as behaving like pro-Russian commenters or in some cases as pro-Russian trolls. I do so because it is near to impossible to know which of the posters are (A) Russians paid to troll FR; (B) other foreigners paid to troll FR; (C) Russians who are not paid to troll FR; (D) other foreigners not paid to troll FR; (E) U.S. citizens paid to troll FR for Putin and/or Russia; or (F) U.S. citizens not paid to troll FR for Putin and/or Russia. I and other participants on FR can only observe who is making the kinds of false and derogatory comments against the United States and other nations such as the Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and so forth who are the objects of Russia’s information warfare and justifiably describe them as being pro-Russian, whether or not they are also trolling the thread to suppress a discussion of the new story that was the topic of the thread in the first place.
Now in this post you once again choose to make complaints against myself and by implication at least against any other FR participant who would call attention to your actions and particularly to your changing of the subject to anything other than how Russia is conducting information warfare with false propaganda and disinformation. You have had endless opportunities with this article in particular to discuss anything at all to do with the merits and demerits of the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency, 131 Lakhtinsky Prospekt, Olgino, Kurortny District, St. Petersburg, Russia; but you have consistently failed to do so. Instead, you come here to argue in favor of censoring the appearance of news articles which talk about the participation of Russian trolls in a non-Russian forum. Instead you come into the article to complain about being described as pro-Russian posters and/or in some particular cases as pro-Russian trolls, because your comments change the subject to off-topic comments derogatory of non-Russians and commentary critical of Russia. Consequently, your complaint must be rejected as yet another attempt to shut down and censor discussions that are critical of Russia and pro-Russian participants.
“While there may have been some comments posted that promoted the Russian government or Putin, I’d be hard pressed to find one.”
Then you must either be blind or deliberately engaging in presenting yet another falsehood to serve a strawman argument. Instead of changing the subject by provoking an argument over a question of whether or not your comments are pro-Russian, why don’t you simply remain on topic and discuss the topic of the news story concerning the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency? When you refuse to do so why should the other FR participants not conclude your behavior qualifies as a pro-Russian attempt to “disrupt” a discussion of a news story which is critical of Russia?
“Extremely intensive social engineering campaigns occurred in countries with authoritarian governments.”
Yes, and “social engineering campaigns” have a long history among other non-totalitarian governments such as Britain and the United States. However, they are not the topic of this news story and they are arguably of a major difference in character and conduct. You are perfectly free to raise their actions as a topic of discussion about a news story related to them. In the meantime, it is quite reasonable to observe that efforts made to change the subject in this discussion about this news story concerning Professional Russian Trolls may be construed as a pro-Russian effort to disrupt, suppress, or even censor this discussion about Russia. To avoid making such an impression, you might try the obvious course of refraining from making off-topic comments about the United States and its allies and their sources of propaganda as you make comments pro and/or con about the topic of the discussion for this news article, i.e. the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency.
“McCarthyism”
What does “McCarthyism” have to do with the topic of this news story, the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency?
What that where mind control and torture experiments were carried out?
“What that where mind control and torture experiments were carried out?”
1. Was you comment turned into mumbo jumbo by typos, or is that your version of English?
2. What do “mind control and torture experiments” have to do with the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia, which is the topic of this news tory and discussion?
You're leaving out Leonard Cohen - who rumor has it - was connected to MK-ULTRA... (yes Canadian - but MK-ULTRA WAS run out of Montreal...)
Yes, typos...
Just as a general observation, the tensions created are truly unfortunate.
There are plenty of Russians and others from that part of the world here in the USA, maybe some of them are active in this even but I’m under the impression they could care less. The National Hockey League of course, has tons of Russians in it and have aided greatly some Stanley Cup winning clubs like the Detroit Red Wings or in other cases, have MVP caliber players like Ovechkin. We even had some roofers in the neighborhood, they were certainly from somewhere over there though I didn’t really care to engage them on a conversation on this. Maybe they were from somewhere like Moldova.
So, this kind of tension is unfortunate, I can understand people going on a rant on this topic.
When the Beijing Olympics occurred, I definitely think a similar phenomenon happened defending China and of course, the SUC, Serbian Unity (Unified?) Congress have been out in force before. So, these kinds of things aren’t bad things necessarily, it’s just been done a bit in an abrasive vein in these most recent episodes.
By the way, I don’t really want to get into quibbles over the SUC or China. It seems the SUC has largely closed down, I went to their website the other day and believe they were largely well-intentioned and it was not like these arguments tended to grit on people’s nerves. I’d probably say what they were saying was not really a ‘propaganda-line’ but this isn’t really about them anyway.
Just related.
Joseph Stalin attended a seminary until he was 21. I suppose Stalinism was a plot by the Orthodox church.
Is that a typo or code? Just kidding...
I have a very long list of ComDem Obot Trolls for Twitter. Have been collecting them for years.
But often there is one troll and they have dozens of screen names. They give the appearance of working in packs and often only are 2 Trolls.
They are coordinated by “leaders” who have some oversight on the non-leaders. When you stumble onto the “leader” you can search and collect a “honey pot” of Trolls.
I have concluded most of those on Twitter are “off-shore”. Probably work cheaper. Probably paid by Soros or one of his buddies.
Look on twitter and there is a leftist troll with the screen name “@RedScareBot”. He uses the same photo of Joe McCarthy that you posted as his Avatar.
He is one of the polite trolls, he even occasionally Retweets something I stated. He even has a sense of humour. He does not appear to be from offshore.
A worthwhile endeavor and very interesting comparison.
To be sure Lenin was clear that Capitalism would collapse as the inside rotted in decadence.
I suppose he simply got the timeline wrong.
Thought I would help you...laong
Always appreciate your pings Pieter, and the light you shine on so many topics.
“We have several posters here who are raving with an idea of so-called ‘Putinista troll’ presense who themselves are trolls of the highest magnitude,”
Before the coup, CNN was lauding how “Sophisticated” the EuroMaidan’s “Internet Opinion Operation” was, even showing the servers, and people online, in several languages.
Hillary Clinton’s “Clinton’s Civil Society 2.0 initiative” sponsored the Soros “Open Society”-financed “Tech Camps” which trained hundreds of “Internet Opinion Engineers” in Ukraine leading up to Maidan.
The very same Ukie trolls screaming “TROLL FACTORY!!” won’t acknowledge that they themselves are very likely a product of, or at a minimum, very heavily influenced by, the very same type of Ukrainian “TROLL FACTORY!” they are whining about.
“I have a very long list of ComDem Obot Trolls for Twitter. Have been collecting them for years.
But often there is one troll and they have dozens of screen names. They give the appearance of working in packs and often only are 2 Trolls.”
If you do Real-time searches on twitter, you can see automated “Troll-bots” in action.
They will post dozens, or sometimes HUNDREDS of messages, all saying exactly the same thing, with exactly the same hashtags, within a few minutes.
This is to drive whatever it is they are pimping to the top of the “Trending” topics lists. Today’s Major Media uses that “Trending List” to decide whatever is they will be talking about that day, because they want to appear “Popular” and “Hip”, doncha know.
Mashable, and how they use Twitter trollbots to drive traffic to their site is a perfect example.
When they post a story on a subject, you literally can’t search that subject on twitter, due to all of the bots reposting it over the next hour. It’s crazy...
Meanwhile in Ukraine, Christopher J. Miller, a Mashable contributor, was working his sources and providing information to the main Mashable story while also writing his own piece as further developments unfolded. Miller and two editors in New York also cowrote a story highlighting leaked audio from an alleged conversation between pro-Russian rebels and Russian security forces discussing the plane. The breaking news story has been shared more than 30,000 times; Mashable’s continued updating its coverage, including dispatches from Miller filed from the crash site.
Odd, it's almost like they knew it was going to happen.
In truth there's many of the “World Citizens” online doing just that.
There's “Machines” as this all over the states and Internationally. Just depends on were they have them focused.
Needless to say we have the “Clinton Machine”..The “Obama Machine”..The Islamic Machine”... and many others that tap the college campuses where kids like to “feel” significant by signing onto where ever their political interests are....and more often than not they gravitate to anything on the social media to do the work.
Everything has a certain rhythm to it....you can tell when kids are out of school...and college kids when date night hasn't materialized for them. The entire social networks “rhythm” shows who is on as the tempo of posters changes.
Same when there is a particular political event and the true activists, hired and otherwise, begin commenting. Nestled among them all are those who love to simply "create" chaos situations that aren't real to begin with.
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