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[Nye Bevan]

5. Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America

Russia’s campaign to shape international opinion around its invasion of Ukraine has extended to recruiting and training a new cadre of online trolls that have been deployed to spread the Kremlin’s message on the comments section of top American websites.

Plans attached to emails leaked by a mysterious Russian hacker collective show IT managers reporting on a new ideological front against the West in the comments sections of Fox News, Huffington Post, The Blaze, Politico, and WorldNetDaily.

The bizarre hive of social media activity appears to be part of a two-pronged Kremlin campaign to claim control over the internet, launching a million-dollar army of trolls to mold American public opinion as it cracks down on internet freedom at home.

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The trolls appear to have taken pains to learn the sites’ different commenting systems. A report on initial efforts to post comments discusses the types of profanity and abuse that are allowed on some sites, but not others. “Direct offense of Americans as a race are not published (‘Your nation is a nation of complete idiots’),” the author wrote of fringe conspiracy site WorldNetDaily, “nor are vulgar reactions to the political work of Barack Obama (‘Obama did shit his pants while talking about foreign affairs, how you can feel yourself psychologically comfortable with pants full of shit?’).” Another suggested creating “up to 100” fake accounts on the Huffington Post to master the site’s complicated commenting system.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias-troll-army-hit-america#.ul8LGn1rWY