
Why We’re Sharing 3M Russian Troll Tweets - dsr12
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-were-sharing-3-million-russian-troll-tweets/amp/
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notadoc
Here's the Clemson paper the article references:

[http://pwarren.people.clemson.edu/Linvill_Warren_TrollFactor...](http://pwarren.people.clemson.edu/Linvill_Warren_TrollFactory.pdf)

Pay attention to this line from the abstract:

> We identified five handle categories: right troll, left troll, news feed,
> hashtag gamer, and fearmonger

Now try something interesting for yourself: get on Twitter, then look for any
legitimate political news article from a mainstream publication or politician,
and look at the responses. Look how quickly you will find what matches those
"handle categories" identified in that paper. Look for the absurd statements.
Look for the ready-made memes. Look for the ridiculous and incendiary
hashtags. Look at the accounts engaging in it all, many of which mold to a
generic formula and post 24/7/365 as if its automated or a full time job.
Sometimes you can even do a reverse image search on the profiles to find
they're stock photos or were pulled from some random biography page on the web
and never matching up to the name used in the profile.

It makes you wonder just how much social media activity is an organized
campaign of nonsense or agitprop.

