Who was behind all of this? When I stumbled on it last fall, I had an idea. I was already investigating a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, that spreads false information on the Internet. It has gone by a few names, but I will refer to it by its best known: the Internet Research Agency. The agency had become known for employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter, in order to create the illusion of a massive army of supporters; it has often been called a “troll farm.” The more I investigated this group, the more links I discovered between it and the hoaxes. In April, I went to St. Petersburg to learn more about the agency and its brand of information warfare, which it has aggressively deployed against political opponents at home, Russia’s perceived enemies abroad and, more recently, me.
If you ever wonder where those crazy Putin supporters all across the web came from – well, now you know.
Thom, you are getting into bullshit territory with this.
See also http://pando.com/2015/04/02/the-kremlins-social-media-trolls-are-re…
Edited 2015-06-02 14:30 UTC
…to publish this here. Last thing we need here is drawing the shills’ attention to this resource, because what they essentially do is poison the place with their drivel. Slashdot is already infected.
Ironically, access to the linked article is blocked in Russia.
It’s not blocked here in St. Petersburg (the provider is OBIT Communications).
Don’t worry comrade. Technicians are on the way to protect you from the western propaganda.
Really though, its not much different than companies that do the same kind of trolling and blackhat SEO to hide any truth they find inconvenient.
I guess putting the resources of nation state amplifies things to a certain extent. Its not good, any of it. Truth and good intentions are becoming scarce commodities online.
I sometimes wonder about myself. Do I come to learn the truth, or only hear the truth that I want to be true?
No one would believe you.
>> Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
The city of Kremlin troll factory.
Coincidence? Unlikely.
[Paid troll detected ^aoe”]
You’re just trolling static666 right? There are many more people leaving in St Petersburg than the trolls.
BS. It is not blocked.
I do not know, but i have seen such trolls from private companies and governments (democratic and undemocratic alike) extolling the virtues of whatever they are sellin’, bullshit, propaganda or whatnot..
The most famous unraveled troll farm that was exposed in the US (that i have seen at least) belonging to an arm of the scientology church a while back.
I think one of the main reasons why those trolls and astroturfers are a problem is because our own media aren’t exactly reliable either. If our media would do some proper fact checking and stick with neutral research, people would be less inclined to believe frauds from “the other side”.
The fact there are trolls paid by private companies and western governments does not make any less true the existence of pro-Putin trolls. As it does not make it more moral either.
Really, in this age of “everyone got to spread/dispel” their agenda without the burden of proof I really would like to see osnews to skip this kind of news.
I’m not saying that it is not true, it probably is, but how different it is from what happens here, usually spread by the “grand media” with their own shady agendas ? If not more it is, at minimum, a huge display of hypocrisy.
That said, I still prefer to live on our side of the fence.
It’s probably true in some tangential way, and then twisted and blown out of proportion to make a good story.
The media is a perpetual sensation machine that continuously repeats itself until a story has become common knowledge and the source is buried. I’ve noticed that at the end of the citation trail, it often comes down to hearsay, obscure sources, misinterpreted facts or plain lies.
It’s not necessarily malice, it’s just too damn easy to be a journalist these days. Or perhaps real journalists have simply become too expensive. I know I’m partially to blame as I don’t pay for my news – but I refuse to pay for shoddy reporting.
Donetsk^aEUR“Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic > Donetsk People’s Republic, ta. F-off Nazi and Imperium. Hope that’s trollish enough…
You mean, other than those in the U.S. Senate and radical right-wing media? Now that’s a “real” leader, one that rides his bear shirtless across the Kremlin. If only the GOP could nominate Putin, they would be so happy.
US media outlets don’t need to resort to proparanda. They just tell the naked truth. That they are not telling is not even exist.
The tiny granules of information that carefully selected censors pushing to MSM are pure gold.
Fake “Events” that BBC and CNN staged with actors are not a lie, but a theoretically possible outcome.
Sorry for you Thom, russians are reading western resources (including such that you’re not even aware of) and laughing at the crap MSM feed you.
Happy FOX News watching. The Holy Grail of Truth.
Edited 2015-06-02 22:27 UTC
Classic redirection – the “but Americans…” line again.
Well, the whole world has been laughing at Soviet/Russian media for at least 50 years by now so guess what? The joke is still on you.
Given that 86% of Russians are cheering for Putin as he is wrecking and plundering the country, all that propaganda has been quite effective at brainwashing the masses.
People are exceedingly good at noticing foreign propaganda, while at the same time being completely oblivious to the local variety. Which they’re being fed constantly.
Western media was as compromised as its soviet counterpart. There’s plenty of joke to go around for the two of you…
That is complete insanity.
First, what does “western media” even mean? The “west” consists of countless countries, and each of those countries has hundreds – probably even more – independent press outlets. To claim that all of those press outlets are “as compromised as its soviet counterpart” displays such an utter lack of intelligence and understanding of both western press and the soviet regime that I’m surprised you managed to even type these words to begin with.
The Soviet Union, as well as Putin’s Russia, is a totalitarian dictatorship. Every press outlet is either owned by the dictator’s government, or controlled by it. While there is certainly corporate meddling in our press – in some countries more than in others – to claim that this the same as the press under a totalitarian dictatorship is just… Beyond stupid.
Just look at the Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders. Of the 20 countries with the freest press, only one is (arguably) not western (Jamaica).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index#Rankings_and_score…
Russia, meanwhile, is 147.
I’m all for criticizing our press, but let’s not get batshit insane here. This must be one of the stupidest comments I have ever read on OSAlert – nay – the internet, and that’s saying a lot.
Edited 2015-06-03 19:51 UTC
LOL. No need to waste all that bandwidth with that fallacy fest, when your argument is basically “nuh huh.”
Anyhow. You probably can not see why it is that you flipped your shit when encountering an opinion that went counter your conditioning (in which the propaganda you were exposed to played a big part). Somewhat competent intelligence and self awareness are required for that process to happen after all.
In any case, thanks for proving my earlier point; you have no trouble seeing the propaganda shaping other societies, while being completely oblivious to the one that forms your views.
Edited 2015-06-03 21:18 UTC
Easy way to completely shove aside everything I said. “Yeah well I’ve seen it man, I’ve seen it! The man is holding us down man! You just can’t see it!”
Typical tinfoil behaviour. Tinfoils like you have problems grasping facts and reality – that’s fine, that’s the freedom we all have. Well, here in the west, at least.
Meanwhile, us sane people get a chuckle out of you. “Western press is just as compromised as the Soviet press was”, he writes, openly, on a western press outlet, without being murdered for it, like he would’ve been in the USSR.
By all means, you can keep proving my point.
I see my opinion made your conditioning very uncomfortable, thus your dissonance; you call me “insane” for expressing something counter to your indoctrination, while at the same time, you think of yourself as not having been “propagandized” in the least.
For a Westerner, it is easy to see any low/middle class Russian supporting Putin, for the idiotic dupe for propaganda that he/she really is. And yet, the marketing, public relations, social conditioning, etc. we are exposed to 24/7 on our neck of the woods remain transparent to most people in the West. Like you in this case.
In the end, the butt hurt Russian and you are not that different. You’re both reacting emotionally against something that made your conditioning uncomfortable. Unsurprising, people tend to not only establish emotional relationships, but in many cases identify themselves fully, with their context (Be it a specific socioeconomic system, ideology, culture, nationality, family, etc). Which is why many misinterpret the slightest discussion of the flaws of their context. Just like you did with your almost Pavlovian reaction to my opinion…
Cheers.
The problem with your assertion is that by stating it openly on a western news outlet without (obviously) experiencing any consequences (you won’t be arrested or murdered), you have actually disproven your own assertion.
If our media landscape were really like it was in the Soviet Union – as you claim – then you would not be able to make such claims openly in the first place. The fact that you can, and did, disproves your own claim. Do you not see the fallacy?
Meanwhile, in my comment, I made it very clear that our media isn’t without its faults. Second, I pointed to the independent Press Freedom Index to further disprove your assertion – something you refuse to address because it does not fit your tinfoil thinking. Third, I asked you what “Western media” even means, since “the west” consists of countless countries, each with hundreds of press outlets. You assertion groups them all together, which seems to indicate you think all those thousands of press outlets in the west are owned by or controlled by some supranational government (otherwise it’s not like it was in the Soviet Union). Again – you refuse to address this problem.
There’s one person here who is refusing to posit any facts to support or undergo any effort to explain the claim that “the western media is just as bad as it was in the Soviet Union”. And no, “you are just blind, man” is not an argument or fact.
This is actually pretty true. The large press agencies are owned by very few people/organisations. Everyone else just get their stories from them.
The US press is exceedingly good at propaganda, to the point that people think whatever they read about their side is “common sense” and “just practical” while dismissing the other side as “crazy” and “difficult”. The only reason it’s not as bad as the Soviets and other dictatorships is that both sides are equally big and mostly focus on fighting each other. The international reporting/propaganda on the other hand is terrible, often lacks nuance and contains a lot of factual errors and assumptions.
Western press organisation reports that it’s not as bad as the Russian press. But yeah, it’s not as bad yet, I suppose. Although we don’t kill whistleblowers, we just lock them up, seize their assets and make life difficult for them.
Edited 2015-06-04 08:54 UTC
This is a fallacy. As bad as the US government’s response to Snowden is, fact of the matter is that this revelations are being freely and openly reported on by all US press outlets, both those in favour of his revelations, and those against. In addition, everybody in the US is free to talk about it, share the revelations – heck, prominent US politicians, celebrities, scientists, the public, and so on, have all pledged their support for him opnely – and it has had its intended effect: technology companies are becoming aware of government snooping and are preventing it from happening, laws are changing, etc.
The Snowden story – again – shows you just how wrong the assertion “the western press is the same as it was in the USSR” really is. Meanwhile, virtually all Russian opposition leaders and members of the Russian press critical of Putin are either in prison, or dead.
And that’s just talking of the US, of course – there’s a reason the US isn’t ranked very highly on any press freedom indices.
Edited 2015-06-04 09:21 UTC
Yeah, but I was thinking about the few guys before him (Kirk Wiebe, Klein, Binney). The media refused to hear to them and the government made their life incredibly difficult. And then you have those who disappear in a secret court.
The West simply deals with it in a much smarter way. There is some outcry, then they vote on a meaningless bill that basically legalises what they were doing (just by shifting the burden to the telecoms). Nothing changes, politicians and newspapers look like they did their job and the public still gets the shaft. Meanwhile not a single western country dares to grant Snowden political asylum or even passage.
And finally, I explicitly said that it’s not as bad as in the Soviets Union. I also said that you get all this knowledge about the evils Russia is doing from the media here, who are known to copy each other’s articles without further fact checking (heck, the media’s ombudsguy here even admitted that practice). Yeah sure something shady is going in Russia, but you nor I can tell exactly how shady.
Edited 2015-06-04 11:27 UTC
i wouldn’t call them idiotic dupes, if i were you.
under putins presidency the average wage increased from 100 to over 800$/month.
let alone the improvements regarding their conscription (lower cases of abuse, better gear, much shorter timespan).
but that’s something you won’t find in our press…
Read better press.
easyer sayed than done
at least here in austria…
Uh no it wasn’t.Not to the same extent as, say, Pravda. That’s not saying it wasn’t compromised but it was far from as bad as the Soviet propaganda machine.
bye bye
Any links to a real news article that isn’t a badly dramaticed short-story?
They have a lot of fans in USA (I mean, their political system is the conservative wing platform)
And definitively important. Like George Orwell said: journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.