Trigger Hippie
Senior Member
Russian bloggers are hired to spam forums and social media sites with pro-putin and anti-west rumours, disinformation and bunk. I've never heard of these until today. Although, in hindsight I really shouldn't be surprised they exist.
How effective is the trolling? Consider the following from a former paid troll...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades
Note: I'm not sure if this post fits this new forum, I'll leave it up to the mods. Cheers
How effective is the trolling? Consider the following from a former paid troll...
They also perpetrated hoaxes involving an accident at a chemical plant in Louisiana and an Ebola outbreak in Atlanta.External Quote:Instructions for the political posts would come in "technical tasks" that the trolls received each morning, while the non-political posts had to be thought up personally.
"The scariest thing is when you talk to your friends and they are repeating the same things you saw in the technical tasks, and you realise that all this is having an effect," the former worker said.
The lesson being that even though the media is quick to report on sensational stories, it's important to approach news with a good deal of scepticism; Always follow the golden rule: "Thou shalt always check thy sources!"External Quote:The Columbian Chemicals hoax was not some simple prank by a bored sadist. It was a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures precisely chosen to generate maximum attention. The perpetrators didn't just doctor screenshots from CNN; they also created fully functional clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers. The YouTube video of the man watching TV had been tailor-made for the project. A Wikipedia page was even created for the Columbian Chemicals disaster, which cited the fake YouTube video. As the virtual assault unfolded, it was complemented by text messages to actual residents in St. Mary Parish. It must have taken a team of programmers and content producers to pull off.
And the hoax was just one in a wave of similar attacks during the second half of last year. On Dec. 13, two months after a handful of Ebola cases in the United States touched off a minor media panic, many of the same Twitter accounts used to spread the Columbian Chemicals hoax began to post about an outbreak of Ebola in Atlanta.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades
Note: I'm not sure if this post fits this new forum, I'll leave it up to the mods. Cheers