One substantial difference worth noting between the Russian astroturfing and astroturfing from other countries is that Russian crime have been refining their ab

One substantial difference worth noting between the Russian astroturfing and astroturfing from other countries is that Russian crime have been refining their ability to automate human-like behavior for ad-fraud purposes. For those not familiar with ad fraud, there's been an arms race between criminal organizations to emulate human behavior clicking on ads and the advertising companies trying to detect it. The resulting algorithms have dual use properties that can be applied to astroturfing (e.g. https://www.trustwave.com/Resources/SpiderLabs-Blog/Bedep-trojan-malware-spread-by-the-Angler-exploit-kit-gets-political/ https://www.trustwave.com/Resources/SpiderLabs-Blog/Bedep-tr...).