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My impression is that troll farms work like much of social media, the vast majority of things they do have zero impact on the world but a very small percentage
by faeriechangling 5y ago
My impression is that troll farms work like much of social media, the vast majority of things they do have zero impact on the world but a very small percentage of their efforts goes viral. I think people like to inflate their actual impact for partisan political reasons.
Still I’ll give an example of very effective propaganda. I was linked to this video a few years back made by “independent Canadian Journalist” Eva Bartlett. She oozed credibility, she was a westerner speaking at the UN and had legitimately been to Syria herself. It appealed to all my biases, she spoke against a mainstream media conspiracy to coverup war crimes to promote war in the Middle East. She even got featured by modestly popular pundit Jimmy Dore. Her video has been watched around a million times or so on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M
https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog
Regardless of her sincerity, what isn’t obvious at all from these videos is that she’s on Russia Today’s payroll:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/amp/ https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/am...
Now I won’t comment on the credulity of her claims, but I found it remarkable how when I first watched her video I had NO IDEA she was on RT’s payroll. She was called “Independant Canadian Journalist”. I like to think I’m hard to manipulate but man the Russians played me like a fiddle with this propaganda!