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Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

665 points by prostoalex 7y ago

mrwwwx 7y ago
Isn't it nationalism raising?
kache_ 7y ago
The existence of paid trolls and shills has been a known fact for many years on various imageboards and forums. It's become a bit of an inside joke. I even suspect that some memes have been generated by private institutions. For example, the 30 year old boomer and his association with Monster has been great advertising for Monster Energy (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/30-year-old-boomer https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/30-year-old-boomer)
9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
Reminds me 18th century Paris where professional applauders and influencers were paid to influence the crowd. Or the retro seo trick where you ask a question on yahoo questions so you can answer it with another account to backlink "relevant" website. Literally nothing new, internet has of course changed the scale and took away the monopoly from newspapers and tv.
- growlist 7y ago
  Pre-YouTube, fashion companies would employ companies to identify the cool kids in a group and give them free stuff to wear, in order to promote the brand.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Is this not still a thing for Instagram “influencers”?
    - skocznymroczny 7y ago
      I guess nowadays you don't need companies to tell you who the cool kid is because you can just look at followers count.
  - ivolimmen 7y ago
    There is even a movie about that "The Joneses"
- stephenmm 7y ago
  To me this is exactly the problem of our times and should not be trivialized. Were there too few gatekeepers of news in the past? Maybe, but the "new" problem is that it has become too efficient (IMO) to spread misinformation while peoples ability and tolerance to spend time on researching the facts has diminished. To say it another way, misinformation/obfuscation/misdirection are not new but the scale of it is and it is critical for us to come up with better solutions to deal with it than we have today. Our climate and our democracies depend on it.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Sure, it is not a new problem, but we have to solve it again, and perhaps with a different solution given the new medium.
  - naringas 7y ago
    how was it solved in 18th century Paris? was it solved? I think that culture just sort of "evolves" out of the problem?
    - ls612 7y ago
      It was “solved” by the wholesale bloody massacre of those who lived in the upper strata of society and their families. Not the sort of solution you’d want replicated.
    - ahje 7y ago
      > how was it solved in 18th century Paris? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
- stevenwoo 7y ago
  The TV series Rome (set around Julius Caesar's era) shows a guy orating/reading the daily news which was generally propaganda for whomever was in power, in the making of the accompanying the series, a consultant claims this was historically accurate. Several details in the series seem fantastical to modern viewers but have some historical basis.
  - lainga 7y ago
    Yes, and the guy is one of the few characters to survive each regime change. Gaius! (shovels) Julius! (shovels) Caesar!
- bduerst 7y ago
  >Or the retro seo trick where you ask a question on yahoo questions so you can answer it with another account to backlink "relevant" website. So, Quora?
sqldba 7y ago
This is CRAZY. How the fuck do you explain this level of trolling to your parents! That this is why they shouldn’t repeat neo-Nazi Facebook garbage.
- kleer001 7y ago
  Walk them through the history of Propaganda.
michens 7y ago
I highly recommend reading their statement, which is btw the only content on their site - https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fcatatnet.pl%2Fo-nas%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=http%3A...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  They object to being called a troll farm, but essentially admit to all the activities, including making fake accounts, that makes them a troll farm. Other than getting picky about terminology it appears to be an admission of guilt.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    I once went to a meeting of an actual full-blown cult. It was a very curious evening. The first thing they did was reassure everyone - slightly nervously - that they weren't a cult. "You'll see us called a cult online, but we're not a cult. Ha ha. Definitely not a cult. Certainly not. Oh no." This denial sounds rather similar.
    - vadansky 7y ago
      Reminds me of when my friend took me to a MLM get together (aka Sales Pitch)
      - closetohome 7y ago
        It's not a pyramid, it's an upward funnel!
- tener 7y ago
  Interesting statement. I'm not super convinced by their arguments, but one cannot be sure the newspaper reporting is accurate and unbiased either. Strange how the statement feels chaotic and even unprofessional at times. They should get PR firm perhaps? Oh wait.
d4mi3n 7y ago
I really don't like PR operations like this, but here's a thought experiment: Presumably it's OK to voice one's opinions on social media, but: 1. Is it acceptable for private interests to do the same? 2. At what point does something turn from personal opinion to propaganda? 3. Is it more problematic that a private entity (e.g. a PR firm) is _pretending_ to express an honest opinion? Would this be acceptable if this were a group of up-front political activists instead? Personally, I'd draw the line at private interests trying to influence public opinion. Sadly, this is a process as old as the hills. Marketing and propaganda have existed for a long time, it just seems like it's become much harder to pin it for what it is in the era of social media.
- jmuguy 7y ago
  I've worked with organizations that encouraged their staff to promote their company on social media. This seems fine. However if that staff member then went out and created 10 profiles for made up people, that would be different. So I think that's where I'd draw the line. Are you posting as yourself on social media, or as a bunch of sock puppets? Its sort of the Citizens United argument we've had the US. Does money = speech? I would say it doesn't and democracy depends on opinions being represented in good faith, and not just who can purchase the biggest megaphone.
  - d4mi3n 7y ago
    Citizens United totally slipped my mind. Excellent point on the money = speech argument. A thought I had reading your comment was that what money != speech, money _does_ = reach (sock puppets, marketing campaigns, etc). That said, I have no idea how we can really disentangle the two while we're hearing about things from our own social circles.
- gpm 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm not saying any of these except the first has happened - Tory Bruno (CEO of ULA) promoting ULA on reddit under his own name providing useful information: Definitely ok (thanks Tory! https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno) - Tory Bruno promoting ULA on reddit under a pseudonym: Almost acceptable, not the best since he has money involved and isn't disclosing it, but he probably honestly thinks most of what he is saying. - A PR person hired to promote ULA promoting ULA on reddit under disclosing that they are a PR person: Mostly acceptable, not the best since they probably aren't at all genuine - A PR person hired to promote ULA promoting ULA on reddit under not disclosing that they are a PR person or associated with the company: Mostly unacceptable, this isn't personal opinion but paid propaganda, and it shouldn't masquerade as personal opinion. - A PR person hired to promote ULA promoting ULA on reddit under 10 different pseudonyms: Completely unacceptable, this should probably be made outright illegal. The only purpose of using pseudonyms like this is to trick people into thinking you have support that you do not. The article is talking about the last case, shades of grey exist, but this one is known as pitch black.
rolltiide 7y ago
Does anybody have any recommended marketing firms for these campaigns, aside from Cat@Net mentioned in this article? It has been incredibly hard for me to google, and any PR agency I've worked with isn't equipped to do it. Software firms have been decent but are still developing everything from scratch. They don't have automated ways to manage many profiles at once, so you end up paying for that and then still having nobody that speaks English well enough to control the accounts or even pre-write their statements. And other ill-equipped groups such as in Malaysia and India - and also cheap labor across Europe - are not good enough at colloquial American English > Cat@Net strongly denied it was a “troll farm” Exhibit A, it is incredibly hard to google for troll farms
- d4mi3n 7y ago
  This is basically PR and propaganda. Any companies you find that specialize in social media will probably have a process, and perhaps software systems, to manage this. These companies are doing what they've always done: influencing public opinion. My bugbear here is that they're now doing so without the need to slap their name on endorsements they're making for some private or political interest.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    I had an actual question, I know what they are, do you have the answer? I am using this thread as a suggested topic to get recommendations on the topic.
    - d4mi3n 7y ago
      I don't know of specific companies, was just trying to point you in the right direction. ️
      - rolltiide 7y ago
        okay, now googling for self-proclaimed propaganda firms.
- 7y ago
rad_gruchalski 7y ago
What this article fails to mention: there was recently a case discovered where one of the clients of these troll farms was... Ministry of Justice. They used to slander judges who were not in the political line of thought of the previous / current leading party. The knowledge of this was as high up as Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the man who appears to be driving the whole country from the back seat. One of many, many articles available in Polish press: https://www.rp.pl/Sedziowie-i-sady/309239933-Farma-trolli-w-Ministerstwie-Sprawiedliwosci-co-ustalil-UODO-ws-wycieku-danych-sedziow.html https://www.rp.pl/Sedziowie-i-sady/309239933-Farma-trolli-w-... Edit: added „line of“ in „ They used to slander judges who were not in the political line of thought of the previous / current leading party.“
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-fcc-fake-comments-impersonation https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f...). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.
  - namdnay 7y ago
    Based on these two examples, I wouldn’t say “everyone”. Every corrupt populist administration maybe?
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
      I agree with the argument that two examples are not exactly a pattern, but I am not basing my opinion on just those. It may be that I have become too cynical lately, but if some court cases taught us recently, it is that popular fora of all kinds are a battleground of sorts and everyone there is either an FBI agent, a shill or a dog. For the record, the moment you used word populist makes me question whether you have an axe to grind yourself ( ie. UE establishment is not that happy about Poland and Hungary breaking ranks), but I digress.. This how bad it is. HN is pretty decent moderation-wise and I still keep my guard up.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Yuval_Halevi 7y ago
The sentence 'There is no such thing as bad publicity' Talks exactly about cases like this. The polish PR firm is about to get a wave of leads from this 'negative PR'
- SamBam 7y ago
  So? The only way things are going to change is by bringing it to light. What does it matter if in the short term the bad guys get some free press?
- myama 7y ago
  Also, some clients concerned with the negative association will decide to move to another firm.
lev272 7y ago
Most telling part of their statement is the defense that the company operates "like like any other agency of its kind"—as if that is a defense. As disgusting as this is, there are so many layers to regulating, much of which stems from the nature of social media platforms vs. traditional media platforms. Are the platforms they're posting on subject to the same propaganda regulations as news outlets? Are they as individuals liable for the spread of misinformation, as a result?
williesleg 7y ago
Now about the left's troll farm Nytimes, CBS, NBC, abc, CNN, etc.
dpc_pw 7y ago
The solution is not regulate it. The solution is to stop pretending like social media have anything to do with reality.
- guelo 7y ago
  The solution to the exploitation of human weaknesses is for humans to toughen up and stop being so human. /s
- skybrian 7y ago
  This is sort of like saying the solution to gambling is not to gamble. I mean, on one level, that works for many people, but on another, Las Vegas isn't going anywhere.
  - jtuente 7y ago
    I think it's more akin to "the solution to gambling is to understand that you won't win". On one level you have a small group of people who know precisely how gambling works and can exploit it in limited circumstances, but on the standard level, you have the general population that's just playing games with a chance of winning money.
- dr-detroit 7y ago
  This. Social Media should be avoided its worse for you than cancer.
  - mc3 7y ago
    Wait... HN is Social Media. Well it's not as in your face as FB, but at the minimum it influences people, and anyone can create an account and respond, and lots of people are reading. A lot of work goes into preventing bots etc on HN, but it is still not immune because the prize of getting your opinion or article read by the tech crowd is big.
- int_19h 7y ago
  It's only a solution if it actually solves the issue. You can drop all social media entirely, but other people who do not will still get influenced by it, and then vote. And you then have to deal with what they vote for, because it applies to everybody. This is what makes political ads so different from the rest of them - they're not ads for products that everybody decides for themselves to buy or not. Everybody's decisions here affect everybody else.
greesil 7y ago
I can't wait until we can just automate this garbage generation and put them out of business.
nkozyra 7y ago
This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.
- TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
  Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're making money on the garbage. It's a misalignment of incentives. Until that is fixed, through reorganization or regulation, the problem will persist. They will only do enough to fight this -- both in terms of technology and public image -- so that it doesn't impact their bottom line(s).
  - exogeny 7y ago
    This is 100% correct. FB and TWTR are publicly traded companies; their executives and their board have convinced themselves in an extremely cowardly fashion that their only duty is to the shareholders. They absolutely know that the second they take this stuff seriously, they have to report both how bad it was/is, and how much traffic/revenue to their product was fraudulent at best. It’s so gross.
    - volkk 7y ago
      it's ridiculous how blatant it all is, to the point that even in modern media (e.g tv show Succession) pokes at all the cancer this stuff produces and its one of those things most people are like "yep its happening" but there is nothing being done to stop any of it. ive stopped using facebook/twitter ages ago. that stuff is the downfall of modern society
      - president 7y ago
Keltullis 7y ago
> she was given access to the company’s internal communications channels Did she publicize logs from these channels?
osiaq 7y ago
How is it different from any other of thousands of the troll farms ?
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  It isn't. But this one is more visible due to the article. Hell, I bet they get more requests from this.
swebs 7y ago
What makes this any different from any other social media PR firm?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton's campaign, is spending some $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner. > “It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical,” said Brian Donahue, chief executive of the consulting firm Craft Media/Digital.
- kop316 7y ago
  Yep. That was really bad on Reddit during the election. If you even broached certain topics about Hillary, it was downvoted/flagged right away. Then the day after the election, Those topics actually came up.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    The week after the election was interesting because the trolls didn't have new marching orders. So it was suddenly just random people.
    - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      Exactly. It was weird, a stark contrast to the months up before it. All of a sudden the political subs were... reasonable. I’d love to see a little more research into pre/post event stats.
      - mieseratte 7y ago
        > All of a sudden the political subs were... reasonable. Yeah... no. It went full "Not My President" overnight. Hell, not even overnight. It went full "Not My President" that very night. And if you think that's bad, had to deal with brass at work (fintech) proclaiming that we needed to spend an insane amount of capital in preparation for the record trade volume we would need to process because the markets were going to collapse.
notadoc 7y ago
How many troll farms exist in the USA? Perhaps they're simply an arm of PR and reputation management nowadays. Anyway, further evidence that social media is bad for society.
vwuon 7y ago
I love it when the mass media cry because they are no longer the only ones who can manipulate people.
emptybits 7y ago
> “For them it was just work and that’s it.” Is it? If someone's job is spewing cleverly provocative, disruptive, toxic, and intentionally negative messages all day ... does that edgy skill and behaviour not leak into their home or personal life? I understand, these workers need jobs and I'm sure some get quite proficient at trolling. But my gut says there will be personal side effects from reinforcing and working your brain and interactions like this all day. :-(
- rexpop 7y ago
  Yeah, it's easy to profess that it's "just a job," but one carries one's work into one's private life, and ideological discourse. It's well-understood by Marxists how the mode of production determines the cultural superstructure[1] (and vice-versa). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    > It's well-understood by Marxists how the mode of production determines the cultural superstructure[1] (and vice-versa). It's not "understood," it's a sociological theory. Hardly hard science.
    - zajd 7y ago
      Who said anything about hard science? Just because something is well-understood by a group of people doesn't mean it has to have some sort of scientific basis to have any validity.
      - kortilla 7y ago
        Well at that point, who gives a shit? It offers no predictive capability like real models. Might as well talk about how it’s well understood by the Scientology community that it’s indicative of a required audit.
        7y ago
rehasu 7y ago
Looks like the US is now trying to increase the division between East and West Europe, huh?
misiti3780 7y ago
Facebook has said it disabled 2.2bn fake accounts in the first three months of 2019 Uh, no they didnt that is 90% of the network.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  That would be so helpful if it were true.
wufufufu 7y ago
> A majority of Cat@Net’s employees are understood to be disabled, allowing the company to derive substantial public subsidies from Poland’s National Disabled Rehabilitation Fund. According to the Reporters Foundation, the company has received about 1.5 million zloty (£300,000) from the fund since November 2015. I thought this was the worst part.
sebow 7y ago
It's rather kind of funny when chinese,russian,polish,eastern european,etc. are being called "troll farms" but when they're american they're either not mentioned or called something very insignificant. I guess the "troll farms" of US are homegrown and rather natural,since the bullshit goes deep enough that the population sings the propaganda on it's own. As much as I still prefer the US to be still the leader of the "free" world, you can't be seriously this biased. Every country has it's own mechanisms(more ethical or not, it's besides the point,you could argue they're not ethical since they're pushed by the gov.) that will make certain people resonate some point of views.Since Europeans/Asians are rather poor on average by comparison,I'd imagine they don't have to do it "for free". There's rather very little difference between a person who has been de facto brainwashed to push a certain agenda (that he truly believes, nonetheless) online and a person who ruins his hands by doing it for money. Not to mention you can easily spot "trolls" or "shills" online.They're rather repetitive and obvious, since money is the incentive and not their own belief/"passion".
trekrich 7y ago
The Russian troll factory meme must not be playing very well anymore!
marcinmozejko 7y ago
In my opinion this is actual problem in Poland nowadays, however: a. This article was published by a newspaper which has proven track of publishing fake polarizing news, b. Unfortunately - the so called democratic oposition has also proven track of similar behavior. One may check #SilniRazem (together we are strong) which is kind of meme on Polish Twitter. 3. It is likely that the intent of the original article was to polarize using one-sided reporting of the issue. To sum up - yet another polarizing click-bait with aim is to cause outrage.
- bobthechef 7y ago
  The Guardian is notoriously biased and rabidly left wing. Just look at how they characterize TVP in the article. Is Antifa's propaganda bureau running this newspaper? From what I understand, the investigation was done by the Polish branch of Newsweek, owned by Ringier Axel Springer. For context, people here should know that Ringier Axel Springer is one of a handful of German companies that hold about 80% of the Polish media. These companies are notorious for their hit pieces on conservative politicians and politics. This is a serious problem for Poland, e.g., geopolitically speaking, because it means that foreign interest is molding domestic opinion. By now, anyone who hasn't been pulling a Rip van Winkle knows that the EU is largely a means for Germany to project power and influence, a means to fuel its export market, and a means to acquire cheap labor in the East. Thus, interpreted through this lens, this article starts to look suspicious, perhaps one of those smear pieces where something (unfortunately very commonplace) is attributed exclusively to the enemy. May I remind people that Obama made use of social media long before Hilary and Trump both did, yet Trump gets all of the attention. So if you still don't at least suspect bias, then you're hopeless.
brokenkebab 7y ago
Making of "artificial opinions" is a big part of PR trade now, in use by commercial companies, NGOs, and politicians, of course. If it's paid with tax money that's a scandal, for sure. But otherwise think of any entity which wants (for whatever reason) to influence public opinion - you may be sure they do that sort of stuff with practically 100% certainty. Some prefer to use volunteers for this work, seeing it as a more ethical approach, but it still involves creation of orchestrated accounts, and posting in accordance with guides, and schedules. It's probably worth accepting that unknown voices on the net are unlikely to be trusted sources of information.
ousta 7y ago
why do you think right-wing troll farms even exist? because the media is one-sided, backed-up by billionares who love cheap immigration
lliamander 7y ago
So, can this particular problem be solved if social media accounts had to be tied to a verifiable identity? I don't think we should go that route - as just some non-celebrity figure I would much rather post psuedo-anonymously because the social costs of accidentally saying something "bad" on the internet is way too high. I'm just trying to figure out where the boundaries are.
rzmnzm 7y ago
In my opinion The Guardian is a paid troll farm. It is the media source with the most clickbait headlines and rarely generates good discussion, instead polarises people and leads to slanging matches.
bladelessninja2 7y ago
So internet's got rid of nicknames and switched to real names to avoid anonymounity... yeah... right...
macov2 7y ago
Be warned of doing business in Poland. You might spends years in prison awaiting trial. Google Mr. Osiecki's case, a founder of a public mutual fund, or a case of Mr. Kluska, a founder of Optimus.

665 points by prostoalex 7y ago

Isn't it nationalism raising?

The existence of paid trolls and shills has been a known fact for many years on various imageboards and forums. It's become a bit of an inside joke. I even suspect that some memes have been generated by private institutions. For example, the 30 year old boomer and his association with Monster has been great advertising for Monster Energy (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/30-year-old-boomer https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/30-year-old-boomer)

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

Reminds me 18th century Paris where professional applauders and influencers were paid to influence the crowd. Or the retro seo trick where you ask a question on yahoo questions so you can answer it with another account to backlink "relevant" website. Literally nothing new, internet has of course changed the scale and took away the monopoly from newspapers and tv.

growlist 7y ago
Pre-YouTube, fashion companies would employ companies to identify the cool kids in a group and give them free stuff to wear, in order to promote the brand.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Is this not still a thing for Instagram “influencers”?
  - skocznymroczny 7y ago
    I guess nowadays you don't need companies to tell you who the cool kid is because you can just look at followers count.
- ivolimmen 7y ago
  There is even a movie about that "The Joneses"
stephenmm 7y ago
To me this is exactly the problem of our times and should not be trivialized. Were there too few gatekeepers of news in the past? Maybe, but the "new" problem is that it has become too efficient (IMO) to spread misinformation while peoples ability and tolerance to spend time on researching the facts has diminished. To say it another way, misinformation/obfuscation/misdirection are not new but the scale of it is and it is critical for us to come up with better solutions to deal with it than we have today. Our climate and our democracies depend on it.
cortesoft 7y ago
Sure, it is not a new problem, but we have to solve it again, and perhaps with a different solution given the new medium.
- naringas 7y ago
  how was it solved in 18th century Paris? was it solved? I think that culture just sort of "evolves" out of the problem?
  - ls612 7y ago
    It was “solved” by the wholesale bloody massacre of those who lived in the upper strata of society and their families. Not the sort of solution you’d want replicated.
  - ahje 7y ago
    > how was it solved in 18th century Paris? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
stevenwoo 7y ago
The TV series Rome (set around Julius Caesar's era) shows a guy orating/reading the daily news which was generally propaganda for whomever was in power, in the making of the accompanying the series, a consultant claims this was historically accurate. Several details in the series seem fantastical to modern viewers but have some historical basis.
- lainga 7y ago
  Yes, and the guy is one of the few characters to survive each regime change. Gaius! (shovels) Julius! (shovels) Caesar!
bduerst 7y ago
>Or the retro seo trick where you ask a question on yahoo questions so you can answer it with another account to backlink "relevant" website. So, Quora?

sqldba 7y ago

This is CRAZY. How the fuck do you explain this level of trolling to your parents! That this is why they shouldn’t repeat neo-Nazi Facebook garbage.

kleer001 7y ago
Walk them through the history of Propaganda.

michens 7y ago

I highly recommend reading their statement, which is btw the only content on their site - https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fcatatnet.pl%2Fo-nas%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=http%3A...

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
They object to being called a troll farm, but essentially admit to all the activities, including making fake accounts, that makes them a troll farm. Other than getting picky about terminology it appears to be an admission of guilt.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  I once went to a meeting of an actual full-blown cult. It was a very curious evening. The first thing they did was reassure everyone - slightly nervously - that they weren't a cult. "You'll see us called a cult online, but we're not a cult. Ha ha. Definitely not a cult. Certainly not. Oh no." This denial sounds rather similar.
  - vadansky 7y ago
    Reminds me of when my friend took me to a MLM get together (aka Sales Pitch)
    - closetohome 7y ago
      It's not a pyramid, it's an upward funnel!
tener 7y ago
Interesting statement. I'm not super convinced by their arguments, but one cannot be sure the newspaper reporting is accurate and unbiased either. Strange how the statement feels chaotic and even unprofessional at times. They should get PR firm perhaps? Oh wait.

d4mi3n 7y ago

I really don't like PR operations like this, but here's a thought experiment: Presumably it's OK to voice one's opinions on social media, but: 1. Is it acceptable for private interests to do the same? 2. At what point does something turn from personal opinion to propaganda? 3. Is it more problematic that a private entity (e.g. a PR firm) is _pretending_ to express an honest opinion? Would this be acceptable if this were a group of up-front political activists instead? Personally, I'd draw the line at private interests trying to influence public opinion. Sadly, this is a process as old as the hills. Marketing and propaganda have existed for a long time, it just seems like it's become much harder to pin it for what it is in the era of social media.

jmuguy 7y ago
I've worked with organizations that encouraged their staff to promote their company on social media. This seems fine. However if that staff member then went out and created 10 profiles for made up people, that would be different. So I think that's where I'd draw the line. Are you posting as yourself on social media, or as a bunch of sock puppets? Its sort of the Citizens United argument we've had the US. Does money = speech? I would say it doesn't and democracy depends on opinions being represented in good faith, and not just who can purchase the biggest megaphone.
- d4mi3n 7y ago
  Citizens United totally slipped my mind. Excellent point on the money = speech argument. A thought I had reading your comment was that what money != speech, money _does_ = reach (sock puppets, marketing campaigns, etc). That said, I have no idea how we can really disentangle the two while we're hearing about things from our own social circles.
gpm 7y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not saying any of these except the first has happened - Tory Bruno (CEO of ULA) promoting ULA on reddit under his own name providing useful information: Definitely ok (thanks Tory! https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno) - Tory Bruno promoting ULA on reddit under a pseudonym: Almost acceptable, not the best since he has money involved and isn't disclosing it, but he probably honestly thinks most of what he is saying. - A PR person hired to promote ULA promoting ULA on reddit under disclosing that they are a PR person: Mostly acceptable, not the best since they probably aren't at all genuine - A PR person hired to promote ULA promoting ULA on reddit under not disclosing that they are a PR person or associated with the company: Mostly unacceptable, this isn't personal opinion but paid propaganda, and it shouldn't masquerade as personal opinion. - A PR person hired to promote ULA promoting ULA on reddit under 10 different pseudonyms: Completely unacceptable, this should probably be made outright illegal. The only purpose of using pseudonyms like this is to trick people into thinking you have support that you do not. The article is talking about the last case, shades of grey exist, but this one is known as pitch black.

rolltiide 7y ago

Does anybody have any recommended marketing firms for these campaigns, aside from Cat@Net mentioned in this article? It has been incredibly hard for me to google, and any PR agency I've worked with isn't equipped to do it. Software firms have been decent but are still developing everything from scratch. They don't have automated ways to manage many profiles at once, so you end up paying for that and then still having nobody that speaks English well enough to control the accounts or even pre-write their statements. And other ill-equipped groups such as in Malaysia and India - and also cheap labor across Europe - are not good enough at colloquial American English > Cat@Net strongly denied it was a “troll farm” Exhibit A, it is incredibly hard to google for troll farms

d4mi3n 7y ago
This is basically PR and propaganda. Any companies you find that specialize in social media will probably have a process, and perhaps software systems, to manage this. These companies are doing what they've always done: influencing public opinion. My bugbear here is that they're now doing so without the need to slap their name on endorsements they're making for some private or political interest.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  I had an actual question, I know what they are, do you have the answer? I am using this thread as a suggested topic to get recommendations on the topic.
  - d4mi3n 7y ago
    I don't know of specific companies, was just trying to point you in the right direction. ️
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      okay, now googling for self-proclaimed propaganda firms.
7y ago

rad_gruchalski 7y ago

What this article fails to mention: there was recently a case discovered where one of the clients of these troll farms was... Ministry of Justice. They used to slander judges who were not in the political line of thought of the previous / current leading party. The knowledge of this was as high up as Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the man who appears to be driving the whole country from the back seat. One of many, many articles available in Polish press: https://www.rp.pl/Sedziowie-i-sady/309239933-Farma-trolli-w-Ministerstwie-Sprawiedliwosci-co-ustalil-UODO-ws-wycieku-danych-sedziow.html https://www.rp.pl/Sedziowie-i-sady/309239933-Farma-trolli-w-... Edit: added „line of“ in „ They used to slander judges who were not in the political line of thought of the previous / current leading party.“

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-fcc-fake-comments-impersonation https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f...). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.
- namdnay 7y ago
  Based on these two examples, I wouldn’t say “everyone”. Every corrupt populist administration maybe?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
    I agree with the argument that two examples are not exactly a pattern, but I am not basing my opinion on just those. It may be that I have become too cynical lately, but if some court cases taught us recently, it is that popular fora of all kinds are a battleground of sorts and everyone there is either an FBI agent, a shill or a dog. For the record, the moment you used word populist makes me question whether you have an axe to grind yourself ( ie. UE establishment is not that happy about Poland and Hungary breaking ranks), but I digress.. This how bad it is. HN is pretty decent moderation-wise and I still keep my guard up.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Yuval_Halevi 7y ago

The sentence 'There is no such thing as bad publicity' Talks exactly about cases like this. The polish PR firm is about to get a wave of leads from this 'negative PR'

SamBam 7y ago
So? The only way things are going to change is by bringing it to light. What does it matter if in the short term the bad guys get some free press?
myama 7y ago
Also, some clients concerned with the negative association will decide to move to another firm.

lev272 7y ago

Most telling part of their statement is the defense that the company operates "like like any other agency of its kind"—as if that is a defense. As disgusting as this is, there are so many layers to regulating, much of which stems from the nature of social media platforms vs. traditional media platforms. Are the platforms they're posting on subject to the same propaganda regulations as news outlets? Are they as individuals liable for the spread of misinformation, as a result?

williesleg 7y ago

Now about the left's troll farm Nytimes, CBS, NBC, abc, CNN, etc.

dpc_pw 7y ago

The solution is not regulate it. The solution is to stop pretending like social media have anything to do with reality.

guelo 7y ago
The solution to the exploitation of human weaknesses is for humans to toughen up and stop being so human. /s
skybrian 7y ago
This is sort of like saying the solution to gambling is not to gamble. I mean, on one level, that works for many people, but on another, Las Vegas isn't going anywhere.
- jtuente 7y ago
  I think it's more akin to "the solution to gambling is to understand that you won't win". On one level you have a small group of people who know precisely how gambling works and can exploit it in limited circumstances, but on the standard level, you have the general population that's just playing games with a chance of winning money.
dr-detroit 7y ago
This. Social Media should be avoided its worse for you than cancer.
- mc3 7y ago
  Wait... HN is Social Media. Well it's not as in your face as FB, but at the minimum it influences people, and anyone can create an account and respond, and lots of people are reading. A lot of work goes into preventing bots etc on HN, but it is still not immune because the prize of getting your opinion or article read by the tech crowd is big.
int_19h 7y ago
It's only a solution if it actually solves the issue. You can drop all social media entirely, but other people who do not will still get influenced by it, and then vote. And you then have to deal with what they vote for, because it applies to everybody. This is what makes political ads so different from the rest of them - they're not ads for products that everybody decides for themselves to buy or not. Everybody's decisions here affect everybody else.

greesil 7y ago

I can't wait until we can just automate this garbage generation and put them out of business.

nkozyra 7y ago

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're making money on the garbage. It's a misalignment of incentives. Until that is fixed, through reorganization or regulation, the problem will persist. They will only do enough to fight this -- both in terms of technology and public image -- so that it doesn't impact their bottom line(s).
- exogeny 7y ago
  This is 100% correct. FB and TWTR are publicly traded companies; their executives and their board have convinced themselves in an extremely cowardly fashion that their only duty is to the shareholders. They absolutely know that the second they take this stuff seriously, they have to report both how bad it was/is, and how much traffic/revenue to their product was fraudulent at best. It’s so gross.
  - volkk 7y ago
    it's ridiculous how blatant it all is, to the point that even in modern media (e.g tv show Succession) pokes at all the cancer this stuff produces and its one of those things most people are like "yep its happening" but there is nothing being done to stop any of it. ive stopped using facebook/twitter ages ago. that stuff is the downfall of modern society
    - president 7y ago

Keltullis 7y ago

> she was given access to the company’s internal communications channels Did she publicize logs from these channels?

osiaq 7y ago

How is it different from any other of thousands of the troll farms ?

blaser-waffle 7y ago
It isn't. But this one is more visible due to the article. Hell, I bet they get more requests from this.

swebs 7y ago

What makes this any different from any other social media PR firm?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton's campaign, is spending some $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner. > “It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical,” said Brian Donahue, chief executive of the consulting firm Craft Media/Digital.

kop316 7y ago
Yep. That was really bad on Reddit during the election. If you even broached certain topics about Hillary, it was downvoted/flagged right away. Then the day after the election, Those topics actually came up.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  The week after the election was interesting because the trolls didn't have new marching orders. So it was suddenly just random people.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Exactly. It was weird, a stark contrast to the months up before it. All of a sudden the political subs were... reasonable. I’d love to see a little more research into pre/post event stats.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      > All of a sudden the political subs were... reasonable. Yeah... no. It went full "Not My President" overnight. Hell, not even overnight. It went full "Not My President" that very night. And if you think that's bad, had to deal with brass at work (fintech) proclaiming that we needed to spend an insane amount of capital in preparation for the record trade volume we would need to process because the markets were going to collapse.

notadoc 7y ago

How many troll farms exist in the USA? Perhaps they're simply an arm of PR and reputation management nowadays. Anyway, further evidence that social media is bad for society.

vwuon 7y ago

I love it when the mass media cry because they are no longer the only ones who can manipulate people.

emptybits 7y ago

> “For them it was just work and that’s it.” Is it? If someone's job is spewing cleverly provocative, disruptive, toxic, and intentionally negative messages all day ... does that edgy skill and behaviour not leak into their home or personal life? I understand, these workers need jobs and I'm sure some get quite proficient at trolling. But my gut says there will be personal side effects from reinforcing and working your brain and interactions like this all day. :-(

rexpop 7y ago
Yeah, it's easy to profess that it's "just a job," but one carries one's work into one's private life, and ideological discourse. It's well-understood by Marxists how the mode of production determines the cultural superstructure[1] (and vice-versa). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > It's well-understood by Marxists how the mode of production determines the cultural superstructure[1] (and vice-versa). It's not "understood," it's a sociological theory. Hardly hard science.
  - zajd 7y ago
    Who said anything about hard science? Just because something is well-understood by a group of people doesn't mean it has to have some sort of scientific basis to have any validity.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      Well at that point, who gives a shit? It offers no predictive capability like real models. Might as well talk about how it’s well understood by the Scientology community that it’s indicative of a required audit.
      - 7y ago

rehasu 7y ago

Looks like the US is now trying to increase the division between East and West Europe, huh?

misiti3780 7y ago

Facebook has said it disabled 2.2bn fake accounts in the first three months of 2019 Uh, no they didnt that is 90% of the network.

raxxorrax 7y ago
That would be so helpful if it were true.

wufufufu 7y ago

> A majority of Cat@Net’s employees are understood to be disabled, allowing the company to derive substantial public subsidies from Poland’s National Disabled Rehabilitation Fund. According to the Reporters Foundation, the company has received about 1.5 million zloty (£300,000) from the fund since November 2015. I thought this was the worst part.

sebow 7y ago

It's rather kind of funny when chinese,russian,polish,eastern european,etc. are being called "troll farms" but when they're american they're either not mentioned or called something very insignificant. I guess the "troll farms" of US are homegrown and rather natural,since the bullshit goes deep enough that the population sings the propaganda on it's own. As much as I still prefer the US to be still the leader of the "free" world, you can't be seriously this biased. Every country has it's own mechanisms(more ethical or not, it's besides the point,you could argue they're not ethical since they're pushed by the gov.) that will make certain people resonate some point of views.Since Europeans/Asians are rather poor on average by comparison,I'd imagine they don't have to do it "for free". There's rather very little difference between a person who has been de facto brainwashed to push a certain agenda (that he truly believes, nonetheless) online and a person who ruins his hands by doing it for money. Not to mention you can easily spot "trolls" or "shills" online.They're rather repetitive and obvious, since money is the incentive and not their own belief/"passion".

trekrich 7y ago

The Russian troll factory meme must not be playing very well anymore!

marcinmozejko 7y ago

In my opinion this is actual problem in Poland nowadays, however: a. This article was published by a newspaper which has proven track of publishing fake polarizing news, b. Unfortunately - the so called democratic oposition has also proven track of similar behavior. One may check #SilniRazem (together we are strong) which is kind of meme on Polish Twitter. 3. It is likely that the intent of the original article was to polarize using one-sided reporting of the issue. To sum up - yet another polarizing click-bait with aim is to cause outrage.

bobthechef 7y ago
The Guardian is notoriously biased and rabidly left wing. Just look at how they characterize TVP in the article. Is Antifa's propaganda bureau running this newspaper? From what I understand, the investigation was done by the Polish branch of Newsweek, owned by Ringier Axel Springer. For context, people here should know that Ringier Axel Springer is one of a handful of German companies that hold about 80% of the Polish media. These companies are notorious for their hit pieces on conservative politicians and politics. This is a serious problem for Poland, e.g., geopolitically speaking, because it means that foreign interest is molding domestic opinion. By now, anyone who hasn't been pulling a Rip van Winkle knows that the EU is largely a means for Germany to project power and influence, a means to fuel its export market, and a means to acquire cheap labor in the East. Thus, interpreted through this lens, this article starts to look suspicious, perhaps one of those smear pieces where something (unfortunately very commonplace) is attributed exclusively to the enemy. May I remind people that Obama made use of social media long before Hilary and Trump both did, yet Trump gets all of the attention. So if you still don't at least suspect bias, then you're hopeless.

brokenkebab 7y ago

Making of "artificial opinions" is a big part of PR trade now, in use by commercial companies, NGOs, and politicians, of course. If it's paid with tax money that's a scandal, for sure. But otherwise think of any entity which wants (for whatever reason) to influence public opinion - you may be sure they do that sort of stuff with practically 100% certainty. Some prefer to use volunteers for this work, seeing it as a more ethical approach, but it still involves creation of orchestrated accounts, and posting in accordance with guides, and schedules. It's probably worth accepting that unknown voices on the net are unlikely to be trusted sources of information.

ousta 7y ago

why do you think right-wing troll farms even exist? because the media is one-sided, backed-up by billionares who love cheap immigration

lliamander 7y ago

So, can this particular problem be solved if social media accounts had to be tied to a verifiable identity? I don't think we should go that route - as just some non-celebrity figure I would much rather post psuedo-anonymously because the social costs of accidentally saying something "bad" on the internet is way too high. I'm just trying to figure out where the boundaries are.

rzmnzm 7y ago

In my opinion The Guardian is a paid troll farm. It is the media source with the most clickbait headlines and rarely generates good discussion, instead polarises people and leads to slanging matches.

bladelessninja2 7y ago

So internet's got rid of nicknames and switched to real names to avoid anonymounity... yeah... right...

macov2 7y ago

Be warned of doing business in Poland. You might spends years in prison awaiting trial. Google Mr. Osiecki's case, a founder of a public mutual fund, or a case of Mr. Kluska, a founder of Optimus.