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Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation
- xgndjsjsj 10y agoSome part of me wonders if these Russian astroturfers might be behind the recent /pol/ Trump obsession, given that Trump and Putin are on friendly terms with each other. Edit: before Hillary shills jump on this, her astroturfing campaign on reddit is just as deplorable.
- gruez 10y ago>given that Trump and Putin are on friendly terms with each other which im sure is because putin doesn't think trump is going to win, and he likes trump stirring things up. if trump actually wins, i bet he's going to have a change of heart.
- Jerry2 10y agoNo, he likes him because they're both nationalists. Trump's view of the world is similar to his and Putin believes they can cooperate better. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, wants war with Russia. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/9/hillary-clintons-hawkish-position-on-russia-troubl/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/9/hillary-clint...
- TryAgainMaybe 10y agoHilary does not want war with Russia. I mean, really. Sigh. This website.
- gaius 10y agoYou're half right. She wants war and doesn't care who with.
- vetinari 10y agoEven worse. She thinks that she can win.
- Jerry2 10y agoTry again. Hillary Clinton is the most pro-war, anti-Russia candidate on the Democrat side. She is more hawkish than even Ted Cruz was on the Republican side. Here's an article by Jeffrey Sachs, director of Earth Institute at Columbia University, on The Huffington Post (a left leaning site) saying the same thing: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-is-the-candidate_b_9168938.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-is-the-c...
- qrendel 10y agoClinton is easily one of the most pro-war (meaning an aggressive and militaristic foreign policy) candidates since the end of Vietnam. Many sources on that but I'll link just two.[1][2] Her focus is primarily on Russia, as she openly stated during one of the Democratic debates (given a choice between Iran, Russia, and North Korea, she picked them as "the greatest threat"). The entire Syria thing is largely a proxy war with Russia.[3] She was the main voice that argued against the Pentagon and convinced Obama to get involved in Libya. Whether you want to call it neoconservativism, neoliberalism, neocolonialism, or just liberal internationalism, she is the leading champion for U.S. invasions and war across the world these days.[4][5] [1] http://www.cato.org/blog/2016-presidential-candidate-intervention-meter http://www.cato.org/blog/2016-presidential-candidate-interve... [2] http://johnpilger.com/articles/silencing-america-as-it-prepares-for-war http://johnpilger.com/articles/silencing-america-as-it-prepa... [3] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-mil... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons... [5] http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/clintons-hawk-in-waiting/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/clintons-haw...
- TryAgainMaybe 10y ago"she is the leading champion for U.S. invasions and war across the world these days" Sigh. This website.
- qaq 10y agoTrump has some eastern european partners (Onyshenko) sharing interest in owning beauty pageants with all the fun side activities. Phil Ruffin is married to Nikolaenko who also shares biz interests with Onyshenko. Onyshenko is pro russian ukrainian oligarch and given life style and joint partying has likely enough dirt on Trump passed on to Putin for Putin to feel he has decent leverage over Trump.
- tstactplsignore 10y agoI strongly also suspect that this might be the case- there are a couple of other motives too: (1) They see Trump as destabilizing or disruptive to the US and its international allies, and (2) they see Trump as ideologically aligned with Putin's own highly nationalistic and oligarchial platform and worldview (Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort has direct close ties to Putin's oligarchy)
- mc32 10y agoBut it's not as though for example, people in Hillary's team don't have connections to the nomenklatura. So I don't think those connections are especially illustrative of anything extraordinary.
- woodandsteel 10y agoHuh? You present that as something everyone knows, but I have never even heard anyone make the accusation. I may be wrong, but I am guessing you are following a standard Russian troll tactic. This is when someone makes an accusation, accuse the West or someone in it of the same thing. For instance, when someone says the Russian government is immensely corrupt, say there is corruption in the West, too. The goal is not to make people think well of Russia, that is simply not possible, but to make everyone so cynical and discouraged they won't fight back.
- kbenson 10y ago> I may be wrong, but I am guessing you are following a standard Russian troll tactic... There are ways to word this paragraph that both don't accuse the parent of trolling, and still get across the point that you don't think a specific bit of evidence is as damning as may have been implied, or if just unsupported. Do you really think accusations of trolling are really going to result in a more useful discussion?
- woodandsteel 10y agoTrolling does take place, and we need some way to defend against it. A key way is to educate people so they can recognize it. Do you deny that Russian trolls do regularly use this tactic? >There are ways to word this paragraph... Could you present an example of this? You're right, though, that it was somewhat problematic for me to make a semi-accusation against a particular comment. It makes me think what we need is a page describing common Russian troll tactics, and it could be linked to whenever there is a discussion of Russia, and people could decide for themselves if any comment is a troll. >Do you really think accusations of trolling are really going to result in a more useful discussion? It's awfully hard to have a useful discussion when trolls are trying to take things over. I need to do some thinking on what might work.
- runn1ng 10y agoI don't think so. /pol/ and Trump are made for each other.
- AzzieElbab 10y agooh please. no need to go all binary just because we work with computers.
- dijit 10y agoIn an effort to be entirely objective: disagreeing with a person is not trolling, and Russians do not agree with NATO- which makes sense given that NATO was orchestrated specifically against Russia. I can't help but pity them, it's like having a pit-bull in the corner that nobody loves because it defended them before in a savage way, so they keep putting up gates and fences and pushing it into solitude. I agree that Crimea was not exactly an ideal scenario but I can see both sides of that too. And neither side is as black as they're painted. Realistically, with the exclusion of Crimea, Russia has done nothing that any other large country hasn't done with regards to borders, the difference is that when a British fighter jet comes close to France's border nobody cares because we're allied. But we crucify them for it. As a wise man once said. We make peace with our enemies, not our friends. (The reason I'm talking about this is because of the recent advances of NATO in putting US military installations in Poland to "combat ISIL", and Russians complaining about it has been tagged as trolling somehow.)
- Udo 10y ago> disagreeing with a person is not trolling The word troll has evolved to encompass any sort of dishonest internet activity that is designed to manipulate the response and attitude of the larger audience, but I agree: the right term would be astroturfing. > it's like having a pit-bull in the corner that nobody loves because it defended them before in a savage way That hilariously fails to describe Russia in any way most people would recognize. > Realistically, with the exclusion of Crimea, Russia has done nothing that any other large country hasn't done with regards to borders That's a pretty big exclusion, but concerns about its borders and the threat of annexation - as elevated as it is compared to any other country - is not the main concern here.
- dijit 10y ago>> it's like having a pit-bull in the corner that nobody loves because it defended them before in a savage way >That hilariously fails to describe Russia in any way most people would recognize. I agree. And that's a shame, Russia has always vied for peace and used force where peace was impossible. That's a trend we see all thoughout history (especially in Britain). We can't exactly crucify them for it. >That's a pretty big exclusion, but concerns about its borders and the threat of annexation - as elevated as it is compared to any other country - is not the main concern here. Sure. It's not but I was preempting someone else bringing it up. And while it's a big exemption you have to at least try to understand Russia's position. Not only is it a military base falling into enemy hands, it's control of a southern region, it's potential troubles for its populace that live there in addition and finally they held a refferendum which is certainly the democratically preferred method of agreeing or disagreeing with political change. Just because we didn't send EU troops (who for all russia knows are the same folk who caused destabilisation in the Ukrainian country) to conduct it doesn't mean it was definitely rigged. It doesn't necessarily mean it was free of corruption either of course but I'm playing devils advocate. Because the devil seems to need one.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoRussia's "Troll Army" probably doesn't speak Finnish. We're talking about "Troll Special Task Force" at maximum.
- ptaipale 10y agoThey obviously have sections for various foreign languages, including (but not limited to) Finnish. Native Finnish-speakers have mostly been eliminated in Russia, except for some old people who are not up to working in the troll army. But some people there still do study Finnish, and moreover, the troll army can direct volunteer trolls - e.g. people who were Communist sympathizers and hate USA and NATO. Their dream is gone but their hate is still there. You'll find the "representative of Donetsk Republic" Johan Bäckman running in the elections for the "Finnish Workers Party", a fringe leftist party that got about 0.03 % of the popular vote. That doesn't stop him from representing "the Finnish view" in Russian media.
- bhouston 10y agoSo both China, Russia and Israel have state sponsors social media presences that are intended to uphold the state's perspective? I think the US does similar things in Middle Eastern countries as well, although not aimed at domestic audiences. It this the direction we are headed for the rest of the world?
- yari_ashi_zero 10y agohey Wow so I stumbled into a Natoist troll army barracks here right I guess. No mention anywhere of the right of the population of Crimea to self determination. They held a vote right ?
- guelo 10y agoI'm sure these comments will be filled with Russian propaganda operatives, either the paid or "useful idiot" variety. I used to think the web would be an engine for democracy and transparency but now that view just seems naive. With powerful surveillance and propaganda tools the web is and will continue to be a powerful force for state control. And states will increasingly use it to exert power outside their borders.
- googletazer 10y agoIf you look for something hard enough, you'll see it eventually.
- zzzcpan 10y agoI'm pretty sure they were here long before you posted your comment. As usual for subjects like this.
- Balgair 10y agoThe biggest elephant in the room is: Why pay people to do this? FB, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc could easily make astro-turf 'bots to do this job for them, by a billion+ more, and with very good 'masking' that the 'bots are useful idiots. Surely, these highly funded agencies could do at least a tenth as well in terms of masking and the number of bots. The real question is then, why pay people to do this for them? It is too fishy for me to pay many people all that money and not to just take it themselves with a shell company or some such thing. There are things that are unseen or poorly understood in the West. Is this just some glorified jobs program to pay people to scream at their screens and not riot? Are they really all 'bots that are that good now and we are too dumb to realize it? Perhaps Occam's Razor is the right though, the simplest explanation is the best: Trolls be trollin'.
- zzzcpan 10y ago> Why pay people to do this? At the moment bots cannot gain neither trust of the people nor reputation and without that they cannot be effective.