Putin's Troll Army

According to an article in Berlin's 'Tagesspiegel' - which is a serious newspaper, not part of the yellow press - 2 former 'hate-troll' internet bloggers, Ljudmila Krawtschuk and Marat Burkchard, told the following:

Through something called an 'Internet Research Agency' officially run by businessman Jewgeni Prigoshin but supposedly paid for by the Kremlin, Prigoshin hires people, paying them 750 € a month to spam on internet forums and blogs.

They have to write positive posts for the topics 'Putin', 'Russian Army', 'Crimea' and 'Donbass' and negative posts in Anti-West hate campaigns - for example against the G7 summit and Angela Merkel.

It says that for their pay the bloggers have to work 12 hours a day, posting 135 posts per shift.
They say this agency has 40 departments with 20 such workers each, one department being foreign-language, where double wages get paid.

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/medien/medie ... 99228.html

Yeah, exactly. Frankly, as trolls, they are absolutely pathetic; they couldn't even use three main rules of propaganda right.

Dilandu wrote:Three rules of propaganda:
- Lie more, they would believe at least something
- The lie is much more effective, if mixed with truth
- There is no such great defeat, that couldn't be covered by the smallest victory (c)

To expand the rules...
- The bigger the lie the more likely it is to be believed, especially if people think that only the truth could be that outrageous.
- As a lie is repeated, it takes on the gleam of truth until it has been repeated enough to be taken as true.
- Any lie that sounds logical will be believed unless actual evidence is quickly presented to refute it. Pseudoscience runs on this.
- The younger the person you lie to, the more they will refuse to believe differently when they encounter the actual truth.
- Most people like to believe that they are not at fault. Give them someone else to blame and they will accept without bothering to consider it.
- It is far, far easier to dumb things down than to intelligence things up. Aim for the lowest common denominator and you will not miss.
- Those who can actually think for themselves are rare. If you oppose them, lose no opportunity to trash their reputations in order to ensure that they will not be believed.
- Use the Gray Fallacy whenever you are in the wrong. The public will almost always assume the truth lies between your position and that of your adversary.

Some bloggers that you have blocked have tens thousands of followers. It equals or exceeds the circulation numbers of several respected Russian and Ukrainian periodicals. Just think of it, Facebook – blocking a person's account on a frivolous complaint is actually like closing down a newspaper.

But it's not the worst consequence of your state of denial about the moderation problem. You write in your response that you try to keep Facebook safe for everyone. Sorry, Facebook, but you have failed.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians don't feel safe anymore on your pages. They know that they are potential targets of troll attacks and their accounts can be blocked at any moment. Every response like this one reassures the trolls and gives them a sense of impunity. Every response like this one makes them double and triple their efforts.

On June 2, 2015, The New York Times Magazine published an article titled The Agency, describing in great detail how the army of trolls wreak havoc around the Internet. We have good reasons to believe that your moderation system is being exploited by the people paid from the same sources and using similar methods. And your quality control mechanisms are not up to the task.

Dear Facebook, it's not about a “small number of accounts” that you block incorrectly. You have a systemic problem. You can't solve it with ad hoc measures. You need a systemic solution. It's time to stop denying the facts and fix your moderation practices.

https://www.change.org/p/facebook-stop- ... dium=email


This is the picture of the daughter of Andriy Matvienko, who saved 30 ukranian soldiers. The girl is wearing dead father's Award. So Facebook users , who posted or reposted this picture were banned for posting nudity.

Bruno Behrends wrote:According to an article in Berlin's 'Tagesspiegel' - which is a serious newspaper, not part of the yellow press - 2 former 'hate-troll' internet bloggers, Ljudmila Krawtschuk and Marat Burkchard, told the following:

Through something called an 'Internet Research Agency' officially run by businessman Jewgeni Prigoshin but supposedly paid for by the Kremlin, Prigoshin hires people, paying them 750 € a month to spam on internet forums and blogs.

They have to write positive posts for the topics 'Putin', 'Russian Army', 'Crimea' and 'Donbass' and negative posts in Anti-West hate campaigns - for example against the G7 summit and Angela Merkel.

It says that for their pay the bloggers have to work 12 hours a day, posting 135 posts per shift.
They say this agency has 40 departments with 20 such workers each, one department being foreign-language, where double wages get paid.

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/medien/medie ... 99228.html

Have you even for a second thought about that on a purely mathbased level?

800 people posting 135 posts per day...
So, these folks are posting 39.4 million posts per year, strange how we never see any of them.

So, mind showing me where all those troll posts are? Considering how those claimed troll factories have supposedly existed for over 10 years by now, there should be over 400 million posts to pick from, so come on and show me 10 of them.

I´m on maybe 120 forums, some i check daily, most at least once a month, from small specialised forums via a bit larger like this, up to places which have tens of thousands of active posters, and yet i´m not seeing all these trolls, at all. The closest i can get is some childish "yes it is, not it isn´t" arguments on youtube comments, and if those are supposed to be paid propaganda, my name is very likely Napoleon.

And if you look at Russian-language sites, not much difference. It´s basically just the same kind of arguments i expect to see on any of the Swedish sites i´m on, domestic squabbling. Some good arguments, some bad, some silly, but nothing beyond normal crap.

And obviously, since i do not join in with the russophobia propaganda parade, i´m obviously one of those trolls...

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/saint_da ... iginal.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-Jg1IMIYAAJQKt.jpg

But you wouldn't believe anyway, don't you?

Politically-motivated content removal is an abuse by individual actors of Facebook’s mechanisms for upholding community standards. PEN American Center urges the actors triggering takedowns to end their attempts to unjustly stifle free speech, and calls on Facebook to restore permissible content in a timely manner, to strengthen the current systems in place to ensure that content is not mistakenly blocked, and to strive towards greater transparency regarding their internal quality control systems for content moderation. All persons have the right to express themselves freely through digital media, and this right should be restored for the affected users of Facebook. - See more at: http://www.pen.org/blog/unjustified-tak ... 93IZE.dpuf