Salutin' Putin: inside a Russian troll house
The nondescript building has been identified as the headquarters of Russia’s “troll army”, where hundreds of paid bloggers work round the clock to flood Russian internet forums, social networks and the comments sections of western publications with remarks praising the president, Vladimir Putin, and raging at the depravity and injustice of the west.
The Guardian spoke to two former employees of the troll enterprise, one of whom was in a department running fake blogs on the social network LiveJournal, and one who was part of a team that spammed municipal chat forums around Russia with pro-Kremlin posts. Both said they were employed unofficially and paid cash-in-hand.
“We had to write ‘ordinary posts’, about making cakes or music tracks we liked, but then every now and then throw in a political post about how the Kiev government is fascist, or that sort of thing,” she said.
Scrolling through one of the LiveJournal accounts she ran, the pattern is clear. There are posts about “Europe’s 20 most beautiful castles” and “signs that show you are dating the wrong girl”, interspersed with political posts about Ukraine or suggesting that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is corrupt.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house
While none of this is certainly a surprise to anyone, it may be an accurate reflection of that particular, small demographic on DU which immediately indicts any western news story as 'imperialist propaganda' if it doesn't brand Moscow in bright, sunshiny Christmas lights-- and something to bear in mind as we read the vociferous defenses of questionable RT stories (e.g., the absurd RT coverage of the passenger plane that was shot down in Ukraine resulting in Sara Firth, an RT correspondent, to quit over the blatant dishonesty of the organization).
= new reply since forum marked as read
