Putin Spent Millions To Train A Russian "Troll Army" Of Web Commenters To Make Everyone Like Russia And Hate America On American Blogs
(Source) 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.
“Foreign media are currently actively forming a negative image of the Russian Federation in the eyes of the global community,” one of the project’s team members, Svetlana Boiko, wrote in a strategy document. “Additionally, the discussions formed by comments to those articles are also negative in tone. “Like any brand formed by popular opinion, Russia has its supporters (‘brand advocates’) and its opponents. The main problem is that in the foreign internet community, the ratio of supporters and opponents of Russia is about 20/80 respectively.”
The documents show instructions provided to the commenters that detail the workload expected of them. On an average working day, the Russians are to post on news articles 50 times. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook accounts publishing at least three posts a day and discussing the news in groups at least twice a day. By the end of the first month, they are expected to have won 500 subscribers and get at least five posts on each item a day. On Twitter, the bloggers are expected to manage 10 accounts with up to 2,000 followers and tweet 50 times a day. They are to post messages along themes called “American Dream” and “I Love Russia.” The archetypes for the accounts are called Handkerchief, Gay Turtle, The Ghost of Marius the Giraffe, Left Breast, Black Breast, and Ass, for reasons that are not immediately clear.
The trolling project’s finances are appropriately lavish for its considerable scale. A budget for April 2014, its first month, lists costs for 25 employees and expenses that together total over $75,000. The Internet Research Agency itself, founded last summer, now employs over 600 people and, if spending levels from December 2013 to April continue, is set to budget for over $10 million in 2014, according to the documents. Half of its budget is earmarked to be paid in cash.
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This is war in the year 2014. Forget actually fighting people, that’s old hat, you want to win the hearts and minds of a country and cripple a nation from within you send “Left Breast”, “Black Breast”, and “Ass” out there and let them call a couple people “fags” and “retards” and watch magic happen. Ruthless move by Putin, everyone knows the court of public opinion does the majority of its battles in internet comment sections. Control the message boards and you control people’s minds. And to be perfectly honest, I’m actually surprised we’re still standing as a country right now, because if there is one thing that would keep me up at night it’s “Gay Turtle” reeking havoc on the Huffpo comment section telling everyone Obama is weak and Putin is strong in weird broken English. Scary scary stuff right there. Putin playing chess while we sit inside getting in internet wars with fake people. Yikes
PS
Obviously the question now turns to which one of you guys is really a Russian spy. Second question, did Putin tell you to make fun of my eyebrows or was that something you came up with yourself?