Troll Farm

[August]

Ever wonder who you're chatting with online?

From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0

[Buddahaid]

Must be like shooting fish in a barrel from what I observe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCyr1ugzxXM

[Torplexed]

Putinbots....Putinbots everywhere. :o Maybe even on this very forum.

I suggest we put out cookies in all the corridors as bait.

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/083/f/8/troll_house_by_thecreator365-d3ce59p.jpg

Here Trolly...trolly.

[August]

Personally I think it's brilliant.

[Torplexed]

Personally I think it's brilliant.

Hmmm. I see. :hmmm:

August, have you now, or ever been a member of the Russian Troll Army?

http://skepticism-images.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/images/jreviews/oxnam-house-un-american.jpg

See, the paranoia-sowing part is working already, tovarisch. :D

[Betonov]

Call the Norwegians. They have a profesional troll hunter (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/)

https://www.minnpost.com/sites/default/files/asset/z/zbh3s7/zbh3s7.jpg

[Jimbuna]

http://i.imgur.com/hXklTzN.jpg

[August]

See, the paranoia-sowing part is working already, tovarisch. :D

You really think this is just disinformation? Seems to me that such a program, if it exists would be increasingly effective as more and more folks move away from traditional media news to twitter feeds and other internet sources.

[Schroeder]

You really think this is just disinformation? Seems to me that such a program, if it exists would be increasingly effective as more and more folks move away from traditional media news to twitter feeds and other internet sources.
Do you guys remember that we've had a Russian member here who appeared just as the Crimea crisis swung into high gear, made over a thousand posts and then disappeared again without a trace as things settled?:hmm2:

[CCIP]

Now let's be fair - one of the dangerous things to assume is that anybody who espouses those opinions is necessarily a paid shill/troll. The issue is that there are a lot of people who actually genuinely have those views, and in many regards, that's a much more dangerous thing. And then there are still plenty of trolls will often troll for the sake of trolling.

Are there troll farms like this? Absolutely. But let's not put everything remotely pro-Russian into the troll farm bin now. That's a far more dangerous thing.

And if you're talking about ikalugin, nah, I know him from other forums, both English and Russian. And if he's paid to do that, he's surprisingly good - and a troll of that quality would probably deployed somewhere a little more trafficked than Subsim or Battlefront forums.

[ExFishermanBob]

Call the Norwegians. They have a profesional troll hunter (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/)

https://www.minnpost.com/sites/default/files/asset/z/zbh3s7/zbh3s7.jpg

Ah...TROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

What a great film. I particularly liked the way it just got sillier and sillier but the hunter just played it so very deadpan.

Ringlefinch.

[Betonov]

Ah...TROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

What a great film. I particularly liked the way it just got sillier and sillier but the hunter just played it so very deadpan.

Ringlefinch.

I read half the cast, including the hunter, were proffesional Norwegian comedians. Deadpan delivery shouldn't be too hard for them :)

[Schroeder]

And if you're talking about ikalugin, nah, I know him from other forums, both English and Russian. And if he's paid to do that, he's surprisingly good - and a troll of that quality would probably deployed somewhere a little more trafficked than Subsim or Battlefront forums.
I was.:yeah:
However I wouldn't even call him a troll. I just found his timing of arrival and departure to be very convenient and I had at that time just heard reports about paid people who would wage a positive image war for Russia on social networks.

[August]

Well the article did happen to be about a Petersburg based troll farm but I certainly don't believe that the Russians are the only ones doing this. I would think that not only other nations, mine included, but corporations as well might find it useful to promote or hinder various agendas.

As we have talked about here many times people are more and more getting their news from other sources rather than from the traditional professional media outlets and I believe it is a situation that is increasingly ripe for such exploitation.

People of all nationalities need to understand that what they're reading online may be deliberate misinformation. The more controversial the subject the more likely that organizations will be actively trying to distort the picture to their own benefit and/or to damage their opponents.

[mapuc]

In such case it's god that ignore is at hand.

Markus

[Buddahaid]

In such case it's god that ignore is at hand.

Markus

I'm not getting the translation.

[Jimbuna]

My guess is that 'god' should read 'good'.

[mapuc]

My guess is that 'god' should read 'good'.

It was. A misspell by me

Markus

[Mr Quatro]

Maybe you (means we) shouldn't believe everything we read :hmmm:

Seems the person reporting may be a nut case.

The Russian source is like 250 times better than the European & US sources. They got video and documents.

Seems the lying whore might just be mixing things up instead or might be lost in translation.

http://www.mr7.ru/articles/112478/ (http://www.mr7.ru/articles/112478/)

and this: https://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=sv&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.se&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://www.novayagazeta.ru/inquests/67574.html

PS I liked ikalugin

[mapuc]

When it comes to this Ukrainian crisis I follow Skybirds advise-Do not believe what both side come up with

Markus

[ExFishermanBob]

In such case it's god that ignore is at hand.

Markus

On a few mailing lists that I administered, one could have a 'twit-list' to which abusive or trolling subscribers could be added: those on it could post and see their postings as usual, but others could not. What was interesting is that they would usually not notice that nobody was replying to them.

Hello...anyone there? (Ho ho)

[August]

The only problem with the ignore feature is that it's only applied to those who irritate you. I'd think a paid troll would be careful to avoid having it applied to him lest he loose access to the audience he is being paid to manipulate.

[Onkel Neal]

Yeah, you're right, August. If they get banned or shut down, they don't make any money.

[XabbaRus]

All sides are at it. Just some more blatant than others.
The article was interesting and enlightening but then, and I know this is superficial, but the way the photograph of the lady who accompanied him was posed, like for an advert in a hipster way, kind of ruined the tone.

Anyway like I said you can usually spot the trolls a mile away.
Saying that what about the likes of bellingcat? Any opinions...I'm still not convinced by him. Sure what he does looks good but there's just something odd about the speed he came about and the way he is worshiped by the press.

[ikalugin]

I had... things to do. Those who are extra paranoid would see my activity drop on all the forums I frequent. That said, I may return here as my interest in submarine related things pics up, sadly those are not discussed as actively as politics around those forums.

More GLORIOUS SEVERODVINSK (any other Russian/Soviet subs) = more Ikalugin :)

p.s. the sad thruth is that people do not require to be paid in order to troll on the internet. And certainly "the army of supporters" current Russian Government has is not an illusion, it is a fact - you could see Putin's approval ratings (which went through the roof back when Crimea happened) and you could immagine a proportion of those people who could speak english to some degree. Or use any of the machine translation tools.

[August]

"Troll" Farm isn't really an accurate description for an organization like the one mentioned in the OP article. Sure, irritating a bunch of people on a forum might have some useful applications but it's not (usually) the best way to influence the opinions of ones target audience. After all he's there to change your mind or at least introduce doubt in what you believe, not make your ignore list.

I'd think that a professional would far more persuasive. He'd be knowledgeable in human psychology and trained in propaganda techniques and he would have support and guidance from experts.

[ikalugin]

You would think so, however due to the size of the web and to lesser extend the compartmentalisation, you really need a lot of manpower (well or bot power if you have bots that pass Turing's test) to do any campaighns that actually change public opinion.

Smaller attacks however can and most likely do happen - the attacks that create popular myths/conspiracies (not that such won't come into being by themselves) and thus affect target groops (this tactic works especially well due to compartmentalisation, especially should the target group be fractured/radicalised).

In a way - this -is- the future of informational warfare (in my opinion), as majority of humans are incapable of processing all the excessive ammounts of information on the internet rationally in the time they have and thus tend to use information from social/mass media.
But, as I have said, you need the numbers. Now, immagine PLA getting 100k people to do the job and post 72 hours/week. That would give them (my guess) appox 2,5m equivalent posting group, which would allow to penetrate target country's user base in a significant way (ie with the UK population of ~68m you could expect to deliver a 1/15 proportion of posters, allowing total survalence of local posters (in the totalitarian states proportion of state security agents is between 1/15 to 1/10) and to exert influence in any given matter).

[Eichhörnchen]

Glad to see you back, ikalugin.

[ikalugin]

I think for an external observer it would be intersting to see how opposition related people reduce and de humanise the pro Government posters by calling them putinbots and trolls (sure there are some such posters, but as the obvious math would work - most of them are simple supporters of the establishment and not payed to do it).

At the same time those same people show the pro goverment activities as evill/wrong, while they themselves conduct very same kinds of activities (which aided the protests back in 2011), in fact opposition pionered the usage of new media.

[CCIP]

Well, let's not forget the Arab spring either for example - which owed a lot to social media to get the momentum going, something that decades of attempted revolts had failed to do through conventional means. And then, of course, Islamists proved even more successful at capitalizing on the instability, using that same social media, and that was the end of the Arab Spring.

And for Russia this too is nothing new - in many ways, the Bolsheviks (who were politically among the weakest factions going into the revolution in 1917) succeeded thanks to their ability to leverage grass-roots media of the day and put agitators in the right places (military units, workers' organizations) - not many in number, but generating the right amount of noise at the right time to direct events. And when the right moment came, they proved best at leveraging that ability to agitate.

So the playbook on this matter is pretty old, just the technology is new. Everybody who can, does use it - because it's been shown to work, historically.

[XabbaRus]

I think the cyber trolls really target relatively few well frequented sites, e.g. Guardian comments section.

However I have noticed lately that accusing someone of being a troll or on Putin's pay role - if you disagree with the something concerning Russia and argue against some aspects of the western POV - is easier than engaging someone in debate. I have had it when I pointed out some quite blatant errors in someones message...was quite funny at first but then got nasty.

[August]

You would think so, however due to the size of the web and to lesser extend the compartmentalisation, you really need a lot of manpower (well or bot power if you have bots that pass Turing's test) to do any campaighns that actually change public opinion.

Smaller attacks however can and most likely do happen - the attacks that create popular myths/conspiracies (not that such won't come into being by themselves) and thus affect target groops (this tactic works especially well due to compartmentalisation, especially should the target group be fractured/radicalised).

In a way - this -is- the future of informational warfare (in my opinion), as majority of humans are incapable of processing all the excessive ammounts of information on the internet rationally in the time they have and thus tend to use information from social/mass media.
But, as I have said, you need the numbers. Now, immagine PLA getting 100k people to do the job and post 72 hours/week. That would give them (my guess) appox 2,5m equivalent posting group, which would allow to penetrate target country's user base in a significant way (ie with the UK population of ~68m you could expect to deliver a 1/15 proportion of posters, allowing total survalence of local posters (in the totalitarian states proportion of state security agents is between 1/15 to 1/10) and to exert influence in any given matter).

Numbers only really matter in polls. Internet forums and media article comments can easily be saturated without a workforce in the millions or even in the hundreds.

As for being called Putinbots and other disparaging names lets just say that's a two way street. Pro-government supporters are just as prolific as anyone in that regard. Besides nobody really knows who these opposition related name callers really are. They profess to be anti-putin but maybe they are secretly pro-putin and just trying to make the opposition look like fools or criminals. Not exactly difficult to do with an anonymous internet persona or three.

I believe that you are right that most people are just simple supporters of the establishment but I wonder how much can simple supporters be guided and supported in their arguments by a few well placed comments from a single professional troll.

[ikalugin]

True, a majority can be lead by payed Internet users, but you need to achieve a given proportion in my opinion to make that effect significant, if only due to the compartmentalization of the Internet (ie people joining specific comunities dependent on their interests/the kind of materials they wish to consume).

But, yes, in some cases it could and does work - for example DoS attacks during the 080808 war against Georgian Internet resources by Russian school kids/university students.