
The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg - sergeant3
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
======
meesterdude
> Volodin installed in his office a custom-designed computer terminal loaded
> with a system called Prism, which monitored public sentiment online using 60
> million sources

Oh look, they've got prism too!

> According to the website of its manufacturer, Prism “actively tracks the
> social media activities that result in increased social tension, disorderly
> conduct, protest sentiments and extremism.”

Well that's comforting.

This is obviously still in it's infancy, but they're only going to get better
at this. Obvious leads and dead giveaways will be replaced with more subtly
and variance, and detecting whats bullshit and whats real will become even
more difficult, if not impossible.

This is russia's answer to people rioting over corruption in the government.
Not transparency, not change; social manipulation of information and spreading
lies.

And they aren't the only ones doing this. They're just the only ones we know
about. No doubt other countries, companies and criminal organizations are
operating similar tactics already.

Certainly puts a new spin on the term "don't talk to strangers"

~~~
scarmig
I'm not sure if you'd agree with it or not, but I'd want to emphasize
something: this behavior is not limited to foreign governments that have
antithetical interests to the USA. Even publicly, the CIA recognizes that it
has teams of employees working on social media to push people (particularly in
the Middle East) to support positions more consistent with American interests.

And it'd surely be pretty damn profitable in the USA domestically to offer a
service where a bunch of trolls would push your product, service, or candidate
on the Internet.

(This comment may or may not be brought to you by the Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service.)

~~~
criley2
Israel commands a small army of these as well, it's almost comical to see them
appearing in social media and comment sections, but I have no doubt they're
effective.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-
students-social-media/2651715/)

~~~
grevutsky
Comparing an army of mis-information trolls pushing lies to students who are
paid to "combat anti-Semitism and calls to boycott Israel" by telling the
truth is pretty silly, and intellectually dishonest. There is a wave of
antisemitism resurfacing in Europe, as well as antisemitic calls for the
destruction of the state of Israel. And there is nothing wrong or dishonest
about a country fighting back against attempts to delegitimize its existence
with information.

~~~
irv
and you've just conflated anti-semitism and calls to boycott Israel, which I
would certainly class as intellectually dishonest.

~~~
grevutsky
Actually, no I did not. This is the purpose of the Israeli students being
recruited, quoted verbatim in the article - not my conflation. Can I assume
that you agree with my characterization of you comparison as intellectually
dishonest (and factually inaccurate) since you did not disagree with my point
about your post?

------
gyardley
Poorly titled and therefore hard to share on Hacker News, but lengthy and
worth reading investigative reporting into a bizarre 'Internet Research
Agency' that mainly produces pro-Putin propaganda, in both English and
Russian.

I'm surprised, frankly, that they don't have better English-language
proficiency.

~~~
hackuser
> that mainly produces pro-Putin propaganda, in both English and Russian.

And also seems to be testing disinformation campaigns in the US, such as
spreading panic about (fake) disasters.

~~~
josefresco
I feel like this (testing disinformation campaigns within the US) wasn't
addressed fully and is the most significant aspect of the "trolling"
operations. Not many care if Russians are spreading lies to Russians about
Putin, but attempting to cause panic in the US by faking a disaster is the
most dangerous aspect of this practice.

~~~
lgieron
It's also spreading lies about Russians to non-Russians. See for example The
Guardian online forums - these guys dominate conversations which have
something do to with Putin's policies (say the Crimea situation etc).

~~~
mike_hearn
Ugh, fail.

The Guardian comments sections are a trashbag of political censorship and
general idiocy, but I see no evidence that they are being trolled by the
Kremlin. A whole lot of people THINK they are, and the Guardian has levelled
such accusations (without presenting evidence) but my own experience is that I
am routinely accused of working for the Kremlin there, based on no evidence at
all. Their view is simply "you disagree with me therefore you must be a paid
troll". Making things worse: the Guardian moderators delete _vast_ numbers of
comments that would be considered completely acceptable anywhere else, merely
for questioning what their articles say.

I think the only way to respond to government-sponsored trolling is to just
ignore it. Who cares what someone's motivation is? The only practical response
is the same anyway: answer back and be more convincing than they are.

~~~
Canada
I've found the CBC comment moderators like that as well. The moderation policy
is essentially, "Don't be vulgar or threatening"

Yet comments that violate the policy but agree with CBC writers views are
allowed while polite, ad-hominem free dissenting comments are removed.

When there's too much dissent comments are simply closed.

~~~
mike_hearn
Right. The Guardian has a rule that you're not allowed to insult the
journalists. Unfortunately, suggesting that they're wrong, biased or maybe
didn't do their homework is routinely considered to be insulting the
journalists :(

------
astral303
My dad claims that the level of brainwashing in Russia far far exceeds that of
the Soviet regime, and the propaganda is by far worse (and worse than WWII
Germany he says).

Of course statements like that evoke Godwin's law and a hard to swallow.
However, my dad grew up in Soviet Russia and trained troops on the use of
artillery equipment during the Soviet Afghanistan conflict. He's been around
the block and has seen firsthand the Soviet propaganda in multiple Soviet
republics.

If you think about the insidiousness of troll-style, FUD propaganda, it's way
way more psychologically insidious than the overt Soviet propaganda. You can't
cut off access to facts and appear "fair"\--instead you make people question
the truth.

Russia just raised a whole young generation that's a socially-backwards by a
generation. Homophobic, racist, blame-the-west feelings are rampant.

During the early days of the Ukranian conflict, I was surprised to hear a
close relative in Russia tell me how she has seen videos on Youtube of "blacks
from Africa" killing innocent Russian youths ("gouging their eyes out" she
said) in Eastern Ukraine.

This shit is real.

~~~
serg_chernata
I was born and raised in Ukraine till I turned 14. Still have most of my
family there and they visit regularly. They were present during most of the
revolution and I can confirm nothing but love and pride to be Ukrainian. All
that talk about Ukrainian nazi is garbage. Yes, we aren't perfect and we may
have difficulties bringing order but it was all done with good intentions at
heart. Most recent revolutions, including the Orange revolution, are some of
the most peaceful times in Ukraine. People are truly united, crime rates drop
dramatically, people make food and bring it to feed others for free. Both of
my grandparents attended all of these events. I've never been more proud, I
hope peace and order can be restored without Russia's involvement.

~~~
dmix
Taken out of context, this type of comment makes for good nationalist
propaganda.

~~~
serg_chernata
Nothing but love here, I didn't even say anything negative about Russia. You
kind of surprised me with that actually.

------
tptacek
I you haven't read to the end of the story, I _highly_ recommend finishing it;
it has a pretty great ending.

Also! The article outs a couple of US-facing troll operations, one of which,
"Spread Your Wings", is an unintentionally hilarious satire of US partisan
politics, and another highly recommended read if you're up enough on politics
to be in on the joke:

[https://www.facebook.com/actoftruth?fref=photo](https://www.facebook.com/actoftruth?fref=photo)

(My current favorite Spread Your Wings propaganda: GOP Senator and
Presidential hopeful Lindsey Graham: warmonger and Adversary Of The 2nd
Amendment.)

(Moments later: NO WAIT, this inspirational uplifting quote clearly wins the
Internet today:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/4r7r7nvbpn2kp3h/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/4r7r7nvbpn2kp3h/Screenshot%202015-06-02%2013.03.01.png?dl=0))

------
tdees40
If you don't feel like reading it, this is an amusing tale of one arm of the
pro-Kremlin propaganda machine. The kicker is at the end when Russian
propaganda sources tried to make it seem as if the reporter were recruiting
Nazis for a complicated CIA scheme.

~~~
tptacek
Think about that: we know Adrian Chen did not in fact go to Russia to make
common cause with neo-Nazi groups, so the most likely interpretation of those
photos is: some or all of that neo-Nazi group is on the payroll of Russian
propaganda groups.

------
austenallred
Ah, the Russian trolls.

I run a crowdsourced news startup
([https://grasswire.com](https://grasswire.com)), and along with it one of the
bigger non-mainstream news Twitter accounts (@grasswire, 130k followers).

The Ukrainian conflict has died down a little bit, but when it was in full
swing the Russian trolls were _everywhere_ , and were pretty obvious, but that
didn't matter.

For example, here are a couple of my favorites (and among the most active:)

[https://twitter.com/gogigogi12](https://twitter.com/gogigogi12)
[https://twitter.com/steiner1776](https://twitter.com/steiner1776)

I'm pretty sure now they're mostly set to automatically retweet anything with
a pro-Russian sentiment, but back in the day they would pretty much respond to
every tweet. For the casual user it was very convincing stuff: "Oh wow, maybe
@steiner1776 is right and that report was full of lies, and I just didn't know
better - thank goodness I have someone who is willing to stand up for truth."

Most people don't have time to research, and just follow public opinion, even
if the public opinion is created by a bunch of trolls. It's especially easy to
fall for the trolls when they tell you that "the man" has been lying to you
all along (and in most cases "the man" means the United States). (To be clear:
The United States does some messed up stuff and is far, far from without
fault.)

There were a few days when they would seemingly download photos from any
tragedy that had ever happened, and just add a generic line - something like
"Stop killing Donbass people," insinuating that these deaths were caused by
the Ukrainian army (and by extension, somehow, the United States). The photos
were from Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Israel - wherever. I'm sure they were just
being pulled from some file somewhere with a generic message attached. But
that stuff _exploded_. Hundreds of thousands of retweets per day, driving
public opinion, based on complete and utter bullshit.

So there are some Russian trolls; this isn't the end of the world, right? The
problem is that for many of the people on Twitter these were _real people_
expressing _legitimate concern_. Some of their blatantly false tweets (they
were easily discoverable to be such with a reverse image search) went
legitimately viral (not just spun into their other accounts for retweets).
Hundreds of thousands of impressions per tweet from people who aren't going to
run a reverse image search, and get their news from Twitter.

I don't know what the solution is, but this is extremely dangerous for
society. It's easy to pass them off as "trolls," but trolls change the way
that people act and believe, even when they're only sharing false information.

We started Grasswire in part as a response to that. The fact-check feature on
Grasswire isn't used as frequently now, but at the time about 50% of the stuff
that went viral was completely and verifiably false - look at the history of
the Grasswire Fact-Check account (@grasswirefacts) for examples of that. It
helped, but I fear it was only drop in the bucket.

------
danmaz74
I'm really worried about the course Russia is taking under Putin, but people
like Ludmila Savchuk make me hope there is still some hope... I wish her well.

------
sancha_
I am sure this is not only happening in Russia.

~~~
frik
Some PR strategies are similar. A company hold an annual conference several
weeks ago. The company was under represented in the HN user base. What was eye
opening was that many new users joined HN in a short timeframe to write very
pro-company comments - it looked like an concerted effort to polish the
company reputation. Another example is related to a recent video game release.
The marketing was in a gray area almost a fraud and the launch was like a
debacle, though the PR managed to get away with it with a black eye.

~~~
aikah
Do they really need a marketing department in the video game industry? because
game news sites are just that, a outsourced marketing department, I mean just
look at IGN,Polygon, GS and co, heavily pushing Batman these days with like 12
"articles" a day to build the hype,same thing with many games before. There is
no criticism over the terrible commercial practices, the games riddled with
bugs at launch, nothing. What the point of "reviewing" ? they are selling
these games way before they launch and the reviews are published like one week
after launch if not more ( like the order, and others ).

The game industry in collusion with "game journalists", succeeded in making
people want less for their money. The dream of any big corp.

------
jkot
> _The Columbian Chemicals hoax was not some simple prank by a bored sadist.
> It was a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of
> fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of
> figures precisely chosen to generate maximum attention. The perpetrators
> didn’t just doctor screenshots from CNN; they also created fully functional
> clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers. The YouTube
> video of the man watching TV had been tailor-made for the project. A
> Wikipedia page was even created for the Columbian Chemicals disaster, which
> cited the fake YouTube video. As the virtual assault unfolded, it was
> complemented by text messages to actual residents in St. Mary Parish. It
> must have taken a team of programmers and content producers to pull off._

------
nols
The article is really good, but this title is extremely vague.

~~~
sctb
We added part of the article's subtitle to make it more informative. We're
open to suggestions for a better title.

------
m1
_> ISIS had claimed credit for the attack, according to one YouTube video; in
it, a man showed his TV screen, tuned to an Arabic news channel, on which
masked ISIS fighters delivered a speech next to looping footage of an
explosion._

This linked to the wrong video, the actual link is
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2J6RvajSaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2J6RvajSaA)

Edit: He fixed it.

------
sireat
None of this is surprising behaviour (insert obligatory Tu quoque argument
about other countries).

What seems funny that the behaviour of various workers is eerily reminiscent
of various characters in Pelevin's "Generation P"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_%22%D0%9F%22](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_%22%D0%9F%22)

------
TarasKo
[https://www.change.org/p/facebook-stop-political-blocking-
on...](https://www.change.org/p/facebook-stop-political-blocking-on-facebook)

------
Canada
We should call them what they are: Sock Puppets.

Calling them trolls is an insult to trolls.

------
guard-of-terra
I doubt about "well-paid" part. From the article you can deduct they're pair
around 25k RUR/month, $500 in today exchange rate.

~~~
ceejayoz
Wikipedia says that's around the average Russian wage.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"average wage" != "well paid in a large city".

------
hugh4life
Astroturf happens everywhere... news at 11... it's easy to laugh at the paid
Russians and their broken English but it wasn't too long ago you had stories
of British intelligence rigging online polls and the US government contracting
out software to manage mass amounts of social media personas to target
jihadists(and I'm sure the same tactics are being used against Russia too).

~~~
scarmig
The question for me is how to counteract this kind of trolling. If someone is
saying something stupid, it's easy as an individual to ignore it ignoring the
time wasted reading it, but it's genuinely deadly for communities.

I think some kind of web of trust, except this time for comments or social
media artifacts, is probably the way to go.

------
joelx
Read the comments on the nytimes article...

------
towelguy
The Ministry of Truth in the making.

------
ISL
This sort of thing has happened recently on HN, where trolls derailed the
conversation so badly that it was flagged into oblivion. (dang brought it back
to life after an email appeal).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9570202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9570202)

What's the right way for a community to permit free and welcoming discourse
and simultaneously blunt the ability of malicious actors intent on spreading
disinformation? It's a hard problem.

~~~
tptacek
Be careful. The notion that opinions we don't like are generated by organized
trolling campaigns is toxic, and insidiously serves the objectives of the
trolls.

If you feel like comments on a thread are coming from an organized
trolling/shilling campaign, try to collect some evidence for it and then
notify hn@ycombinator.com --- that's what they've asked you to do.

But _don 't_ start a conversation on the thread itself about how specific
commenters, or even a particular style of comment, are being made in bad
faith. It's the easiest criticism in the world for a troll to deflect: just
start an argument that you're commenting in good faith and being persecuted
for unpopular opinions. 100 comments later, the thread will seem to casual
readers like nothing but litigation over who the commenters are. Mission
accomplished.

~~~
ISL
My biggest concern with the death of that thread was that it died due to
flagging.

Totally agreed that even the prior belief that trolling campaigns might exist
is toxic.

Thanks, everyone, for the comments. They're thoughtful.

------
deathwolf
Interesting enquiry and article, though obviously they are much worse at
hiding their tracks than the US Government trolls.

------
mdekkers
This story pops up regular as clockwork, going back before 2012. It's
propaganda in its' own right - no doubt, with equally depressing regularity, I
shall be downvoted into oblivion for having the temerity of actually pointing
it out.

~~~
ddlatham
Got any references or links?

~~~
mdekkers
here is one of many [http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-nashi-anonymous-
opyoung...](http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-nashi-anonymous-
opyoungbustards-2012-2) simply search google for kremlin troll army, restrict
date range, voila.

------
jameshart
Expect a follow-up article in the Washington Post about a covert Chinese
internet propaganda organization which successfully planted a story in the New
York Times attributing a series of alleged online hoaxes to a Russian
organization. The hoaxes seemed real enough - there were youtube videos and
twitter accounts and websites - but in reality there was no evidence that the
hoaxes had ever actually happened.

~~~
jonwachob91
Can we expect another follow up from Huffington Post that it was the NK
propaganda agency which successfully planted the story about the Chinese in
the Washington Post?

And we can continue this story until it comes back that it all started with
the NSA.

... Until we learn that it is really an alien civilization that wants our
natural resources trying to get us all to kill each other so they don't have
to fight us?

I kid I kid, but seriously...

