Don’t be disheartened...these trolls have been doing this for a long time now...
CULTURE
Inside Troll Farms: The World of Networked Disinformation
October 28, 2021 by Marinel Mamac
The term “internet troll” has been around since the ‘80s and ‘90s to describe individuals who would derail conversations on Usenet with spam and harmful content. Far from the small, colorful, and incessantly happy animated creatures we’ve seen on the big screen, real-life trolls work to provoke and manipulate others, either for their own amusement or a specific political goal.
And as the internet grew over the past few decades, so did they.
Not just an angry acquaintance on Facebook or a Twitter user with an egg for a profile picture, trolling today has evolved into an elaborate, industrialized, and global art form, often coordinated in what we now know as troll farms.
These are sophisticated operations that involve groups of people whose job it has become to sow disinformation online in an effort to influence people and governments. Some work in physical offices, while others are paid on a per-day basis as freelancers. Together, workers in these farms amplify key messages, using fear and anger in order to encourage real users to engage and believe in them.
more...
https://www.alittlebithuman.com/inside-troll-farms-the-world-of-networked-disinformation/
Yes, trolls have been around for a long time. (In fact, FR itself had some major issues with organized trolls and sock puppets back in its early days.)
But there’s a genuine danger that conservativism will morph into an ugly authoritarianism (much as liberalism has morphed into a self-hating and self-destructive woke DEI ideology that supports terrorism).