“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.
As I pointed out in my post, the activities of the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency as described in the article are undertaken by the governments of all developed countries.
It's simply engaging the public in social media, and not engaging in social media is simply not an option for governments, or businesses for that matter. Governments of major countries certainly do want to influence public opinion to align with their own views, and they all astroturf and manage their online reputations, as well as wield great backchannel influence over news organizations that are key news outlets for their nation.
The activities of the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency are simply the modern version of public relations and propaganda. All governments engage the public on the internet, albeit on different scales.
