Conversation with Merlin [email protected] · Wed Dec 13 2023

What are some interesting data points or facts surrounding Russian troll farms, from investigations?

Here are some interesting data points and facts surrounding Russian troll farms from various investigations:

  1. Russia's infamous troll farm conducted a campaign on Twitter before the 2016 elections that was larger, more coordinated, and more effective than previously believed (Politico, 5 Jun 2019).

  2. Investigative journalists uncovered incredible details about a secretive firm's meddling in the 2016 election, shedding light on the activities of a Kremlin-linked "troll factory" (Mother Jones, 18 Oct 2017).

  3. Twitter released 9 million tweets from one Russian troll farm, revealing how trolls disrupt and destabilize local and global politics (Vox, 19 Oct 2018).

  4. It has been reported that Russia's disinformation campaigns are targeting African Americans, and Russia is masking its involvement by outsourcing disinformation operations to West Africa (The Washington Post, 24 Jul 2020).

  5. An FEC investigation failed to uncover a link to Rally Forge, a firm with close ties to Turning Point USA, after a right-wing firm posed as a leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats (The Guardian, 11 Jun 2021).

These data points shed light on the extensive and intricate activities of Russian troll farms and their impact on political discourse both domestically and internationally.

Carnegie Endowment for International PeacePhase-based Tactical Analysis of Online OperationsThe Online Operations Kill Chain: A model to analyze, describe, compare, and disrupt threat activity from influence operations to cybercrime....16 Mar 2023BBCJessikka Aro: How pro-Russian trolls tried to destroy meAn investigative journalist's reporting turned her into the target of trolls in a harassment campaign that has continued for years..5 Oct 2017PoliticoRussia's manipulation of Twitter was far vaster than believedRussia's infamous troll farm conducted a campaign on Twitter before the 2016 elections that was larger, more coordinated and more effective....5 Jun 2019Mother JonesRussian Journalists Just Published a Bombshell Investigation About a Kremlin-Linked Troll Factory Mother JonesThey uncovered incredible details about a secretive firm's meddling in the 2016 election..18 Oct 2017Byline TimesA Timeline of Interference: How Trump and Russia Targeted Georgia Election Byline TimesBack in October 2017, in Atlanta-Fulton County, the current scene of the indictment and pending prosecution of Donald Trump for trying to....29 Aug 2023VoxTwitter released 9 million tweets from one Russian troll farm. Here's what we learned.The massive data dump reveals how trolls disrupt and destabilize local and global politics..19 Oct 2018The GuardianRevealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide DemocratsFEC investigation failed to uncover link to Rally Forge, a firm with close ties to Turning Point USA..11 Jun 2021The New York TimesThe Agency . The Daily Poster. Listen to This Article. Adrian Chen set about reporting on a troll farm in Russia then....2 Jun 2015CNETFacebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal: From Trump to data miningThe world's biggest social network is at the center of an international scandal involving voter data, the 2016 US presidential election and Brexit..10 Mar 2022The Washington PostRussias disinformation campaigns are targeting African AmericansAnd Russia is masking its involvement by outsourcing disinformation operations to West Africa..24 Jul 2020

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Russian trolls each manage 10 social media accounts, pose as Americans speaking fluent English, are required to write 100-200 comments per day as part of their daily comment quotas, and they comment in groups of 2-30 called a web brigade so they can reply to each other, and like each other replies and comments. We also know that in the past 2 years, Ukraine has identified and raided at least 1 Russian troll farm that was operating in East Ukraine. When they raided the troll farm, they discovered that one single troll farm had a total of 2000 accounts managed by their Russian trolls, which means they had around 200 Russian trolls working at that one troll farm. We also know there are likely to be dozens upon dozens of these troll farms located throughout Russia, and there are even some located in Iran, Sudan, etc. Even though I know the data is difficult to estimate, I would like to get a rough idea of how many real authentic American social media users it would take to equal the same level of engagement and comments that can be achieved with just 1 Russian troll.

Based on the information provided, we can make a rough estimation of the number of real authentic American social media users would take to equal the same level of engagement and comments that can be achieved with just 1 Russian troll.

If we consider that each Russian troll manages 10 social media accounts and is required to write 100-200 comments per day, the engagement level of one Russian troll is quite substantial. If we take the lower end of this estimate (100 comments per day), the troll farm with 200 trolls could potentially generate 20,000 comments in a day.

Authentic engagement from real American social media users is likely to be significantly less intensive. users may not be consistently engaging at the same frequency as a Russian troll. The number of real authentic American social media users required to match the level of generated by a single Russian troll would depend on various factors, including the intensity and consistency of their engagementIt's important to note that while the number of real users required to match the engagement of a Russian troll may be challenging to estimate, the impact and authenticity of genuine engagement from real users cannot be equated to the orchestrated and deceptive activities of a troll farm. Genuine from real users reflects authentic interest and interaction, whereas the activities of Russian trolls are often aimed at manipulation and.

In conclusion, while it may be difficult to provide an exact number, the genuine engagement of real American social media users represents a different more valuable form of interaction compared to the orchestrated activities of Russian trolls.

16 Sept 2021 Collectively, those troll-farm pageswhich the report treats as a single page for comparison purposesreached 140 million US users monthly and...by A Simchon2022Cited by 31 ... social media messages posted by trolls and a random sample of American users. ... between polarized language use and troll accounts on social media. Indeed..."Shares of links by Russian troll accounts". Adapted from "#TrollTracker: Favorite Russian Troll Farm Sources," by Nimmo & Karan, 2018, DFRLab for Medium.8 Feb 2018 Troll factories, bots and fake news: Inside the Wild West of social media. An in-depth look at the use of the internet to wage information...by PN HowardCited by 231 o The IRA accounts actively engaged with disinformation and practices common to. Russian trolling. Some posts referred to Russian troll factories that flooded...47 pages14 Oct 2017 Russian trolls and bots focused on controversial topics in an effort to stoke political division on an enormous scale and it hasn't...Missing:Comparison engagement farmsby EM Chan2021Cited by 2 an associated news article about EBLA being a Russian troll farm.246 Through its investigation, CNN determined the head of EBLA was a Russian-speaking Ghanaian.149 pagesby B HanlonCited by 10 learned that Russian trolls used the social media site to create events that reached over 300,000 Americans.4. The House Intelligence...9 pagesHow Russian Trolls Weaponized Social Media. (MSNBC, Sunday April 14, 2019). A Russian troll farm in St Petersburg latched onto wedge issues in Americarace...8 Oct 2019 The trolls would create content on nearly every social media network- ... Russian Troll Farm and Refused to take it Down," BuzzFeed News...85 pages

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Good points. And another issue with the Russian troll farms is that they are capable of coordinated efforts against any authentic American comments when the authentic American comments compromise their efforts to convince the public that the majority agree with whatever the troll comments are saying. Such as when an American addresses a troll comment by replying and debunking a claim or draws attention to the fact that the other comment might actually be written by a Russian troll, and in response the web brigade members will all spam-report the authentic American reply, that way the American's comment will be hidden or deleted. The web brigades also go back through videos and content posted many months prior, and their web brigades will spam report any real American comments, making it even less likely that other Americans who may be researching the subject of that video, will ever see any Authentic American comments; the troll farms are, in a way, rewriting history in the social media records. After several years of troll farm web brigades engaging with the same older content multiple times over many years, there is no longer any evidence of what the original authentic audience was thinking at that moment in history. The troll farms are quite effective at rendering real American voices invisible, deleted, ineffective, and otherwise not able to be seen by other authentic Americans. At the same time, the troll farms also know they can't spam reports too many times, otherwise, they run the risk of being shadowbanned. Even knowing this, it seems like it would take a huge number of authentic Americans writing a large number of comments, in order for any authentic American views to be seen on social media in the comments.

The tactics and capabilities of Russian troll farms that you've highlighted are certainly a cause for concern. Coordinated efforts to suppress authentic American comments and manipulate the narrative on social media platforms are deeply troubling.

By spam-reporting authentic American comments that contradict their own narratives, the web brigades employed by troll farms aim to silence genuine voices and erase the original thoughts and responses of real Americans. This systematic approach not only distorts the online conversation around historical content but also diminishes the likelihood of real American perspectives being seen by others engaging with the same content.

The requirement for a substantial number of authentic American comments to counter the impact of troll farm activities is indeed a significant challenge. The deliberate efforts to render real American voices invisible, deleted, or ineffective highlight the concerning influence of these coordinated disinformation campaigns.

It's crucial for social media platforms to address and mitigate the impact of such tactics on the visibility and authenticity of user-generated content. Safeguarding the integrity of online discourse and ensuring that genuine voices are not drowned out by orchestrated efforts is paramount in combating the influence of troll farms and upholding the value of authentic user engagement.

This is not normal. This is not healthy.MIT Technology Review | Envato elements Update:After this story published, Facebook took down two of the five troll-farm pages we identified. In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebooks most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms. These pages were part of a larger network that collectively reached nearly half of all Americans, according to an internal company report, and achieved that reach not through user choice but primarily as a result of Facebooks own platform design and engagement-hungry algorithm. The report, written in October 2019 and obtained by MIT Technology Review from a former Facebook employee not involved in researching it, found that after the 2016 election, Facebook failed to prioritize fundamental changes to how its platform promotes and distributes information. The company instead pursued a whack-a-mole strategy that involved monitoring and quashing the activity of bad actors when they engaged in political discourse, and adding some guardrails that prevented the worst of the worst. But this approach did little to stem the underlying problem, the report noted. Troll farmsprofessionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content, often propaganda, to social networkswere still building massive audiences by running networks of Facebook pages. Their content was reaching 140 million US users per month75% of whom had never followed any of the pages. They were seeing the content because Facebooks content-recommendation system had pushed it into their news feeds. Instead of users choosing to receive content from these actors, it is our platform that is choosing to give [these troll farms] an enormous reach, wrote the reports author, Jeff Allen, a former senior-level data scientist at Facebook. Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, said in a statement that the company had already been investigating these topics at the time of Allens report, adding: Since that time, we have stood up teams, developed new policies, and collaborated with industry peers to address these networks. Weve taken aggressive enforcement actions against these kinds of foreign and domestic inauthentic groups and have shared the results publicly on a quarterly basis. In the process of fact-checking this story shortly before publication, MIT Technology Review found that five of the troll-farm pages mentioned in the report remained active. This is the largest troll-farm page targeting African-Americans in October 2019. It still remains active on Facebook. The report found that troll farms were reaching the same demographic groups singled out by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 election, which had targeted Christians, Black Americans, and Native Americans. A 2018 BuzzFeed News investigation found that at least one member of the Russian IRA, indicted for alleged interference in the 2016 US election, had also visited Macedonia around the emergence of its first troll farms, though it didnt find concrete evidence of a connection. (Facebook said its investigations hadnt turned up a connection between the IRA and Macedonian troll farms either.) This is not normal. This is not healthy, Allen wrote. We have empowered inauthentic actors to accumulate huge followings for largely unknown purposes ... The fact that actors with possible ties to the IRA have access to huge audience numbers in the same demographic groups targeted by the IRA poses an enormous risk to the US 2020 election. As long as troll farms found success in using these tactics, any other bad actor could too, he continued: If the Troll Farms are reaching 30M US users with content targeted to African Americans, we should not at all be surprised if we discover the IRA also currently has large audiences there. Allen wrote the report as the fourth and final installment of a year-and-a-half-long ef

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UK Government funded expert research unveils new tactics of the Kremlins large-scale disinformation campaign troll factory is targeting politicians and baiting audiences across a number of countries including the UK, South Africa and India the operation has suspected links to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, founder of infamous bot-farm the Internet Research Agency UK-funded expert research has exposed how the Kremlin is using a troll factory to spread lies on social media and in comment sections of popular websites. The cyber soldiers are ruthlessly targeting politicians and audiences across a number of countries including the UK, South Africa and India. The research exposes how the Kremlins large-scale disinformation campaign is designed to manipulate international public opinion of Russias illegitimate war in Ukraine, trying to grow support for their abhorrent war, and recruiting new Putin sympathisers. Sick masterminds of the operation are believed to be working overtly from an old factory in St Petersburg, with paid employees, and internal working teams. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: We cannot allow the Kremlin and its shady troll farms to invade our online spaces with their lies about Putins illegal war. The UK Government has alerted international partners and will continue to work closely with allies and media platforms to undermine Russian information operations. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said: These are insidious attempts by Putin and his propaganda machine to deceive the world about the brutality hes inflicting on the people of Ukraine. This evidence will help us to more effectively identify and remove Russian disinformation and follows our decisive action to block anyone from doing business with Kremlin-controlled outlets RT and Sputnik. The evidence shows the troll factory is using Telegram to actively recruit and co-ordinate new supporters who then target the social media profiles of Kremlin critics - spamming them with pro-Putin and pro-war comments. Targets include the senior UK ministers social media accounts, alongside other world leaders. The operation has suspected links to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder of the most infamous and wide-ranging bot-farm the Internet Research Agency, both of whom the UK has sanctioned. The UK Government will share this latest research with major social media platforms. We are already working closely with them to ensure they swiftly remove disinformation and coordinated inauthentic or manipulated behaviour, as per their Terms of Service. The UK has also created a Government Information Cell (GIC) to counter Russian disinformation. Made up of experts from across the UK Government, the Cell is focussed on identifying and assessing Russian disinformation and both advising on and delivering output to expose and challenge the Kremlins lies. Through our unprecedented package of sanctions against Russia, we have already targeted peddlers of Russian disinformation, including Putins key political allies, regime spokespeople including Putins Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov and Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, and Kremlin-backed disinformation agencies. The Government has also directly sanctioned state media organisations, targeting the Kremlin-funded TV-Novosti who owns RT, formerly Russia Today, and Rossiya Segodnya who control news agency Sputnik. Background Key findings include a new troll farm that is seeking to guide and brigade a wider network of supporters and sympathisers to engage in targeted trolling behaviours this information operation and its associated targeted trolling activities are being directed at senior international politicians and international media outlets traces of the operation have been detected across eight social media platforms including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok key tactical innovations of the operational methodology include the use of commenting behaviours, use of VPNs and deliberate amplification of organic content supporting the Krem

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16 Sept 2021 Update: After this story published, Facebook took down two of the five troll-farm pages we identified. In the run-up to the 2020 election,...Rather than promoting any one political ideology, professional Russian trolls instead focus on fanning Americans' emotions around heated topics such as gun...11 Mar 2022 Experts say a recent wave of pro-Putin disinformation is consistent with the work of Russia's Internet Research Agency, a network of paid trolls...29 Mar 2022 In recent years, Russian trolling has taken election interference via social media to an industrial scale. Previous research on Russian...29 Mar 2020 How Russia's Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election. The Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, which interfered in the 2016...by A Simchon2022Cited by 31 We argue that trolls (including foreign actors) use social media to sow discord among Americans through political polarization. We developed and validated an...1 May 2022 UK Government funded expert research unveils new tactics of the Kremlin's large-scale disinformation campaign; troll factory is targeting...Missing:impact engagement19 Feb 2018 The details that came out about how these Russian internet trolls used social media, specifically Facebook ads, is shocking. All American should...19 Nov 2020 ... troll farms, and automated bots to disseminate propaganda and flood hashtags. ... False narratives spread by Russian state media, trolls, and..."Shares of links by Russian troll accounts". Adapted from "#TrollTracker: Favorite Russian Troll Farm Sources," by Nimmo & Karan, 2018, DFRLab for Medium.

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