Effort to Expose Russia's 'Troll Army' Draws Vicious Retaliation

[uhnope]

Source: New York Times

HELSINKI, Finland — Seeking to shine some light into the dark world of Internet trolls, a journalist with Finland’s national broadcaster asked members of her audience to share their experience of encounters with Russia’s “troll army,” a raucous and often venomous force of online agitators. The response was overwhelming, though not in the direction that the journalist, Jessikka Aro, had hoped.

As she expected, she received some feedback from people who had clashed with aggressively pro-Russian voices online. But she was taken aback, and shaken, by a vicious retaliatory campaign of harassment and insults against her and her work by those same pro-Russian voices. “Everything in my life went to hell thanks to the trolls,” said Ms. Aro, a 35-year-old investigative reporter with the social media division of Finland’s state broadcaster, Yle Kioski.
...
But pro-Russian voices have become such a noisy and disruptive presence that both NATO and the European Union have set up special units to combat what they see as a growing threat not only to civil discourse but to the well-being of Europe’s democratic order and even to its security.

In response to her reporting, pro-Russian activists in Helsinki organized a protest outside the headquarters of Yle, accusing it of being a troll factory itself. Only a handful of people showed up. At the same time, Ms. Aro has been peppered with abusive emails, vilified as a drug dealer on social media sites and mocked as a delusional bimbo in a music video posted on YouTube. “There are so many layers of fakery you get lost,” said Ms. Aro, who was awarded the Finnish Grand Prize for Journalism in March.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/world/europe/russia-finland-nato-trolls.html?_r=0

---

The Russian gov is out-of-control with their thuggery & cyberbullying

[Lodestar]

1. Hard to sort out our own government propoganda and their paid trolls from

Last edited Tue May 31, 2016, 09:28 AM - Edit history (1)

the others. Apparently, in this country, it is perfectly legal to hire "trolls" to
infest a site like DU, for instance.

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

[DetlefK]

3. Examples?

What are topics those "hired trolls" talk about on DU?

[smiley]

4. how awesome Hillary is.

[DetlefK]

5. And that makes them trolls?

[MisterFred]

9. Some of them, yes.

This is a well-established practice. It's not something new or unknown. Companies have been hiring people to edit wikipedia for well over a decade now. But that's just the most famous example of hiring people to alter opinion on the internet. The scary part is the upcoming automation.

[DetlefK]

15. "Some do it" is no proof for "They do it".

[d_legendary1]

21. Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

Citing “lessons learned from online engagement with ‘Bernie Bros,’” a pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC is pledging to spend $1 million to “push back against” users on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Instagram.


Correct the Record’s “Barrier Breakers” project boasts in a press release that it has already “addressed more than 5,000 people that have personally attacked Hillary Clinton on Twitter.” The PAC released this on Thursday.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/21/hillary-pac-spends-1-million-to-correct-commenters-on-reddit-and-facebook.html

Money has been spent online to make HRC look good. It no wonder that there has been a spike in brock-puppet activity.

[certainot]

48. they'd be dumb not to counter all the republican trolls pretending to be bernie or bust

probably a lot of that coming from troll factories hired by rove and co. the foreign ones would be less likely to be exposed and be a lot cheaper, with less chance of whistleblowers.

where dems for both candidates are really dumb is ignoring a much bigger problem considering this simple math:

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 1200 stations, rw talk radio is worth 4.68 BIL$/ year or 390MIL$ /month FREE for coordinated global warming denial, pro republican wall st think tank propaganda, free market deregulation bullshit, swiftboating, and the hate and fear used to get people to vote republican.

that's what bush cheney rove used to lie us into iraq, including with paid callers, and are now using to excuse everything trump and attack hilllary and bernie.

even more dumb is that at least 1/4 of those stations, such as 270 limbaugh stations, piggyback and are endorsed by the sports teams/logos of these 90 universities.

how many bernie and hillary supporters/activists are students at these universities, letting their activism on all major issues be yelled over by a few hundred ignorant racist global warming-denying liberal-hating professional liars?

ALABAMA 8 Auburn 3, Alabama 2, Southern Alabama 2, Troy 1
ARIZONA 2 Arizona St. 1, Arizona 1
ARKANSAS 3 Arkansas 3
CALIFORNIA 5 San Jose State 2, USC 2, Fresno St. 1
COLORADO 4 Air Force 2, Colorado 1, Colorado State 1
CONNECTICUT 1 Connecticut 1
FLORIDA 20 Florida 10, Florida St. 4 Miami 2, South Florida 2, Central Florida 2
GEORGIA 14 Georgia 7, Georgia Tech 5, Georgia Southern 2
IDAHO 7 Boise St. 4, Idaho 3
ILLINOIS 7 Illinois 7
INDIANA 11 Notre Dame 6, Purdue 4, Indiana 1
IOWA 5 Iowa 4, Iowa St. 1
KANSAS 4 Kansas St. 2, Kansas 1, Wichita St. 1
KENTUCKY 3 Louisville 2, Kentucky 1
LOUSIANA 3 LSU 2, La.-Monroe 1
MARYLAND 2 Maryland 2
MASSACHUSETTS 1 Boston College 1
MICHIGAN 19 Michigan St. 11, Michigan 7, Western Michigan 1
MINNESOTA 4 Minnesota 4
MISSISSIPPI 6 Mississippi St. 3, Mississippi 2, Southern Miss 1
MISSOURI 6 Missouri 6
NEBRASKA 6 Nebraska 6
NEVADA 1 Nevada 1
NEW JERSEY 2 Rutgers 1, Seton Hall 1
NEW MEXICO 3 New Mexico 2, New Mexico St. 1
NEW YORK 7 Syracuse 6, Army 1
NORTH CAROLINA 16 North Carolina 8, North Carolina State 3, Duke 3, East Carolina 2
OHIO 10 Ohio St. 6, Toledo 1, Dayton 1, Bowling Green 1, Xavier 1
OKLAHOMA 5 Oklahoma St. 3, Oklahoma 1, Oral Roberts 1
OREGON 12 Oregon St. 7, Oregon 5
PENNSYLVANIA 14 Penn St. 11, Pittsburgh 2, Temple 1
SOUTH CAROLINA 4 South Carolina 2, Clemson 2
TENNESSEE 7 Tennessee 4, Memphis 3
TEXAS 16 Texas A&M 9, Texas Tech 4, Texas 1, Texas Christian 1, Baylor 1
UTAH 1 Utah St. 1
VIRGINIA 6 Virginia Tech 5, Virginia 1
WASHINGTON 6 Washington 5, Washington St. 1
WEST VIRGINIA 2 West Virginia 1, Marshall 1
WISCONSIN 4 Wisconsin 4

[d_legendary1]

58. Got any proof that Bernie or Bust posters are all right wing trolls?

And why should anyone spend money to clear their name against propaganda? If anything its the paid spreading of propaganda to make sure that the message that they want heard makes it to you and me. Now a days we have the internet to find information assuming you can use google properly. There's no need to spend that kind of cash to post on places like D.U. to "clear" a candidate's name.

Hillary by no means is a saint, but lying to clean up her image only makes her look desperate.

[certainot]

61. i didn't say they were all rw trolls

if i was a candidate getting hammered by a republican russian troll operation i'd probably feel the need to pay someone to counter it.

when all of a sudden a bunch of people join a liberal blog and post multiple daily well written long hillary hit pieces, that makes me suspicious

i realize there are bernie supporters who don't want to vote for hillary but once the primary is over if they continue to explain why they can't vote for her they might as well be republican trolls.

[Sunlei]

49. a million isn't much to spend on a "social media business"

[d_legendary1]

59. It is if you're paying people $.05 a post

It'll get your message across spamming the internet with the message you want people to hear. Plus its not like these jobs pay a decent wage or benefits. Its just side money for people who can do it.

[Lodestar]

25. info wars

[TipTok]

50. It doesn't hurt to apply some common sense...

User: Hillaryisthebestevereverever

Joined FEB 2016

Several hundred posts all multiple paragraphs in length and only on one subject.

No one is speaking in terms of certainty but we don't have to bury heads in sand either.

[LanternWaste]

52. some Sanders supporters doing precisely the same are trolls as well, yes?

The corollary being that some Sanders supporters are also doing precisely the same are trolls as well, yes?

[MisterFred]

64. Yes, some Sanders supporters are trolls.

I'd be more likely to believe that the Clinton campaign has hired internet marketing firms that would use paid commentators though, because of the much higher number of outlets purchased by Clinton-aligned groups. Examples: the Onion, Blue Nation Review. (In fact, I don't think Sanders-aligned groups have purchased any media outlets.)

[Lodestar]

23. Snowden uncovered/released information about this subject.

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.


cont'd
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

[Lodestar]

26. CIA and NSA programs

Of course, the same type of online patrolling by the government is also happening in the U.S., particularly from the CIA and its infamous In-Q-Tel program. At a 2012 summit, former CIA director David Petraeus essentially admitted that the CIA has a covert online presence that it uses not only for data mining purposes but also to infiltrate online conversations for the purpose of protecting "national security" interests. Such interests, it turns out, include disrupting conversations that discuss topics like 9/11 truth, for instance, or U.S. involvement in giving weapons to Syrian rebels.

According to Occupy Corporatism, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which was recently exposed by American hero and whistleblower Edward Snowden for its illegal surveillance programs, has devised a training program that literally scouts out hackers from American colleges and universities and recruits them to work for the government. Among the many duties sought from those enrolled in the National Centers of Academic Excellence in the Cyber Operations Program are "collection, exploitation, and response" activities to take place in the online environment.


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/042093_internet_trolls_chat_rooms_federal_government.html#ixzz4AErVTMW4


http://www.naturalnews.com/042093_internet_trolls_chat_rooms_federal_government.html

[Gman]

29. That's the only explanation that makes sense to you?

You have a very narrow world view.

[DetlefK]

32. Demanding evidence is not "a narrow world view".

[Gman]

43. The cognitive dissonance can be stifling

[LanternWaste]

53. I pretend objective evidence is stifling as well... it protects us from rational thought.

I pretend objective evidence is stifling as well... it protects us from rational thought.

[uhnope]

6. your balderdash would make Sarah Palin proud

"apparently" "it is legal" "to hire" ... what the heck are you talking about.

Interesting that you would immediately throw this confusing distraction in on the subject of Russian trolls in the media

[geek tragedy]

7. 14 more days of tinfoil theories like this nt

[MisterFred]

10. Pfft.

Next you'll tell me that companies don't hire people to edit their wikipedia pages!

[geek tragedy]

11. I can't imagine who would have so much money that they'd waste it hiring

trolls at DU.

[Octafish]

14. How about smear artists?

Do they work for free?

[Dr Hobbitstein]

17. There are many here, I believe, who see DU as the center of the liberal political world.

When really, it's a zit on the ass of the liberal political world. It has zero real world impact.

[uhnope]

38. now THAT'S an inconvenient truth! nt

[Lodestar]

27. YOU would. Your tax dollars at work.

Of course, the same type of online patrolling by the government is also happening in the U.S., particularly from the CIA and its infamous In-Q-Tel program. At a 2012 summit, former CIA director David Petraeus essentially admitted that the CIA has a covert online presence that it uses not only for data mining purposes but also to infiltrate online conversations for the purpose of protecting "national security" interests. Such interests, it turns out, include disrupting conversations that discuss topics like 9/11 truth, for instance, or U.S. involvement in giving weapons to Syrian rebels.

According to Occupy Corporatism, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which was recently exposed by American hero and whistleblower Edward Snowden for its illegal surveillance programs, has devised a training program that literally scouts out hackers from American colleges and universities and recruits them to work for the government. Among the many duties sought from those enrolled in the National Centers of Academic Excellence in the Cyber Operations Program are "collection, exploitation, and response" activities to take place in the online environment.


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/042093_internet_trolls_chat_rooms_federal_government.html#ixzz4AErVTMW4

[geek tragedy]

28. Natural News is a crazy-ass nutjob anti-vaxxer website. nt

[Lodestar]

30. Would love to see the list of "legitimate xources" you come up with.

Do suppose one of those corporate or government owned resources
would be MORE accurate.

[geek tragedy]

31. They think Obama is an Islamist terrorist under deep cover. They're crazy.

http://grist.org/food/heres-why-natural-news-is-neither/

You automatically lose the argument when citing them.

[uhnope]

39. you just won the thread

awesome, thank you

[certainot]

47. republicons have been using paid callers for rw radio for years

and it would be naive and trollish to suggest the predominant internet trolling was coming from the hillary camp, or any, for that matter.

the main trolling i've seen on progressive sites is trolls pretending to be bernie supporters, streams of well written and frequent diaries repeating the usual rw bullshit about the clintons repeated for 25 years on rw radio and later on fox, from writers with very few comments.

i suspect the clinton social media effort was to counter some of that. that's the kind of shit that a russian troll factory would do for rove and co. i haven't seen anything that looks like and that makes the most sense by far - typical rovian tactic to suppress votes. and it makes a lot of sense that with all their money the republican forces of evil are hiring those foreign troll factories.

[dbackjon]

66. Yes there are paid Russian trolls on this site

[DetlefK]

2. Decades-old soviet propaganda-technique, now brought back with RT and internet-trolls.

"Bombard the readers with bullshit, overload them, confuse them, until their attention drops. Then slip in half-truths."

For example: RT-articles read pretty normal on the surface... and then they slip in nuggets like a whistleblower revealing that US-generals are actually clinically insane ("psychopaths&quot or that ISIS is actually working for the US.

[MisterFred]

12. Why not?

Tell me a news source that doesn't often lie to people...

It's no worse than gaining information from any other source with an obvious bias. It's really not any different than parsing information delivered by CNN or Fox News.

[Adrahil]

16. I think it is different.

RT is more the equivalent of the Voice of America or some other government-sponsored propaganda outlet. Whatever you think of CNN or even Faux, they are NOT government enterprises.


RT isn't just a corporate news source with an agenda. It is a government mouth piece engaged in shaping public opinion to meet the end goals of an actual government. It has more than a bias and point of view. It is part of an orchestrated and coordinated effort to meet specific political ends on an international scale.

[MisterFred]

63. Well, it's true that the origin of their bias is different.

But frankly, I don't really care about that. Privately-funded propaganda is not inherently superior to government-funded propaganda.

[metroins]

19. It is much different

Our MSM propaganda is like having allergies(CNN) or the flu(Fox).

RT is in the same league as Alex Jones and is akin to having ebola or some other extremely deadly disease.

RT is on it's own level of bs.

[DetlefK]

22. There is more than CNN, Fox News and RT on the internet... Have you tried:

Have you tried
http://www.spiegel.de/international/ (though a little bit too "both-sides-do-it" for my taste)
http://international.sueddeutsche.de/
http://www.dw.com/de/themen/s-9077
http://www.euronews.com/
http://www.aljazeera.com/
http://www.thelocal.com/contentmarketing/#!//&lang=en

[MisterFred]

62. Yes to some of those.

Though my favorite is the Guardian, with the BBC probably a good second.

Frankly though, al-Jazeera is a good outlet to compare RT to. They both have pretty blatant biases, yet many or most of their stories are high quality and quite worth someone's time. al-Jazeera is better, especially for world news, but if you forswear RT because of its biased coverage and can't see that often happens with al-Jazeera...

[Lodestar]

34. Clinton SuperPac Admits to Paying Internet Trolls

I've listed several sources in this thread. Take it or leave it. Doesn't matter to me.
Why don't you prove the government is NOT spying, infiltrating, hiring trolls on the
internet. Silly, of course they do.

And then there are privately hired interrupters like Hillary's PAC hired.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/21/1518537/-Clinton-SuperPac-Admits-to-Paying-Internet-Trolls

[DetlefK]

35. And that makes russian trolling and russian propaganda okay?

See? You try to push a rhetorical point on me I didn't make. And I push right back with exactly the same tactic.

Try again.

Thanks for the link.

[Sunlei]

13. Putin went all out old school 'soviet union' on media & internet access. Government took over.

Europeans should probably ip block any emails from Russia.

[iandhr]

18. What are their DU usernames?

[FSogol]

20. Quite often it is "name removed"

[iandhr]

24. lol

[Democat]

33. Not often enough

There are some long time trolls that never seem to get banned.

[Bradical79]

60. True.

Yeah. With some you just wait for them to cross a line. Like one I recall posting and defending an RT article of which the sole source they used was an American Holocaust denier.

[MohRokTah]

40. Da Comrade.

[ish of the hammer]

41. red baiting worked in the 50's, but it was bull shit then and it's bull shit now.

thanks for proving my point.

[ish of the hammer]

42. the russian political system today is an oligarchy...

much like our own.

[Sunlei]

45. We're a democratic republic, Putin. get your face out of your cellphone.

If you want the most technical term, our country is a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic. Our form of government, the constitution limits the power of government. We elect representatives, so it's not a pure democracy. But we do elect them by majority rule so it is democratic

[ish of the hammer]

46. why are you calling me Putin? is that an insult of some kind?

they have elections in russia also, so what? it's an oligarchy just the same as in the U.S. of A. you get to vote on
people picked by the oligarchy and you think it's democracy. what protections do you have from the Patriot Act?
does the constitution protect your person and your privacy? lets ask the NSA, shall we?

[Sunlei]

51. It'S YoUr SeLeCtIve CaPs pUtIn. Would you please return the thousands of items, the nazi loot

your dear old Dad & soviet troops took back to Russia? All of it doesn't belong to you.

[ish of the hammer]

55. ask the Swiss to return the Jews money, ask the American military to return von Braun's

rockets. the nazis killed 60 million russians and you're crying about some loot. read some fucking history, sunny boy.

[Sunlei]

56. HeRe's some MoRe FoOd PuTiN. TrY to SenD Me to SiBerA.

Mazal Tov bagger.

[ish of the hammer]

57. not much sense here, sunny boy.

have a nice day.

[uhnope]

65. I think you do not realize that you just got destroyed

[Sunlei]

44. So, Putin didn't take over Russias entire media last year place it under government authority AND

require any citizen of russia who wanted to use online media to register their entire personal information with the government first?

[Blue_Tires]

37. But Snowden + Greenwald said we're the only country to do this!!