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My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

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Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#41

Post by crdoconnor »

ysilver wrote: post #28

Back to the USSR. East-West relations are reverting to the Cold War days. From saber-rattling, proxy wars to propaganda campaigns, few will dispute that there has been a back-slide in recent years. But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda…

>But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda campaign. It is a highly unstable equilibrium.

America and North Korea have both been doing it successfully for years. You either need very sophisticated propaganda (America) or a very strict control over information (NK) or a mix (China).

The only reason it became 'unstable' in the Soviet Union was glasnost, which was deliberate government policy by Gorbachev. Without Glasnost the Soviet Union would probably still be around.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#42

Post by talmand »

sharetea wrote: post #40

Russian trolls are fascinating. The trolls' messages are low class, hateful, incoherent and always grammatically incorrect, yet they seem to be able to infiltrate discussions on cnn, bloomberg, reddit, zerohedge (which is an anti-western site anyways), and sometimes hacker news, and seem to have some influences amongst uninformed and angry netizens. Case in point, a random stock broker at my brokerage mentions to me…

That threat you speak of is not from trolls, but from people who believe them. Our world of instant communications and easy access to it has shown the problems of not educating the masses of how the internet works.

This is nothing new. History is rife with examples of propaganda leading to policy. It's just more widespread and happens faster now.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#43

Post by acqq »

metafunctor wrote: post #38
acqq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She states: the "high level Finnish Parliament official Peter Saramo has been spreading lies about me – Saramo said I put all Finnish journalists to shame and later spread false information about me." Does she claim that the member of the Parliament is a paid Russian troll? Or that he believed some false information to be true? What was it? What are the "lies" he have "spread"? I only see something he wrote using his…

She says that Peter Saramo has been affected by pro-russian propaganda, not that he would be directly involved in producing it. Saramo is of the opinion that Russian trolling does not exist, and that Aro is spreading unsubstantiated lies. I can't easily find what the false information is that Aro claims Saramo has been spreading about her.

> She says that Peter Saramo has been affected by pro-russian propaganda, not that he would be directly involved in producing it.

She explicitly claims that he "spreads lies" about her. If the Facebook comment pictured is the statement that "she is a shame" then I don't understand that as "spreading" (when it's a Facebook comment) and "lies" (when it's an unfavorable opinion).

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#44

Post by acqq »

nabla9 wrote: post #37
acqq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She states: the "high level Finnish Parliament official Peter Saramo has been spreading lies about me – Saramo said I put all Finnish journalists to shame and later spread false information about me." Does she claim that the member of the Parliament is a paid Russian troll? Or that he believed some false information to be true? What was it? What are the "lies" he have "spread"? I only see something he wrote using his…

Saramo is not a paid troll (at least not directly). You could call him captured pawn for troll army. Saramo is member of Finnish-Russian (Friendship) Society and very sympathetic to Russian point of view.

> a captured pawn (...) a member of Finnish-Russian (Friendship) Society and very sympathetic to Russian point of view

And as a member of that Society elected to the Parliament? What's wrong with that? Democracy working, he being a representative of his voters and all that.

I'm still asking what the "lies" she claims that he "spreads" about her are. After that question, calling him a "captured pawn" is a distraction, not a contribution to the discussion.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#45

Post by alendit »

ysilver wrote: post #28

Back to the USSR. East-West relations are reverting to the Cold War days. From saber-rattling, proxy wars to propaganda campaigns, few will dispute that there has been a back-slide in recent years. But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda…

> Right now the Kremlin is likely undergoing an intense debate on how to spin the downing of the recent Russian flight as something other than a reaction to the Russian air war in Syria.

They can always claim that ISIS hates Russia's freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PKRHgmHzK0 .

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#46

Post by acqq »

metafunctor wrote: post #17
acqq wrote: post #8

"In September 2014 I started a crowdsourced series of stories about pro-Russia trolls" I'm not inclined to google translate a lot of pages in Finnish, but can't it be that "crowdsourced" here means "a series of articles written by the unverified authors?" Which would be quite funny given their topic. I don't know and I'd like to hear from somebody who does, somebody who understands Finnish? The same person could try…

Here "crowdsourced" means that Jessikka Aro solicited for experiences from members of the public who have been targeted by trolls. As far as I can tell, any resulting articles have been written by journalists and have gone through the usual journalistic process. I haven't actually read many of her articles, but my assessment is that she is not strongly biased. It is widely accepted as fact that pro-russian trolling i…

> As far as I can tell, any resulting articles have been written by journalists

So she didn't sign these articles? Why would then anybody direct some campaign at her?

Something is missing in this story.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#47

Post by orf »

FilterSweep wrote: post #36
nocsaer1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In what alternate reality outside of a war zone is a journalist a victim? >No, she has been personally harassed due to the area she is working in. I'm glad you figured it out. The rest of your comment is a strawman.

> The rest of your comment is a strawman Tell me the logical fallacy for misattributing a logical fallacy to dismiss a comment. I'll create one: "reductio ad latinam." The rest of your comment is a reductio ad latinam. A reduction to a latin phrase. From parent, whose context you've neglected in your dismissal: >ousta 34 minutes ago >every newspaper on earth is a propaganda newspaper. Also, this "harassment" is to be…

> Also, this "harassment" is to be expected from boots-on-the-ground paid Russian trolls. Complaining about it is poking a bear in the nose with a stick and not expecting it to react.

Therefore it's her fault? That's like saying "if you complain about sexual harrasment and get fired it's your fault, you shouldn't have poked the bear".

I hope you see how ignorant that is.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#48

Post by jqm »

I'm sure Russian trolls exist. I would guess pro-US trolls exist as well. That said, not everyone who disagrees with some aspects of US foreign policy is Russian troll. Some people in forums seem to get confused on this point.

I've been accused of being a Russian troll simply because I don't support US attempts to overturn the current Syrian government and didn't care for US involvement in overturning the Ukrainian government. And I don't support Putin or Russian expansion. I just don't believe US policy is wise nor humane on these matters.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#49

Post by ysilver »

crdoconnor wrote: post #41
ysilver wrote: post #28

Back to the USSR. East-West relations are reverting to the Cold War days. From saber-rattling, proxy wars to propaganda campaigns, few will dispute that there has been a back-slide in recent years. But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda…

>But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda campaign. It is a highly unstable equilibrium. America and North Korea have both been doing it successfully for years. You either need very sophisticated propaganda (America) or a very strict contr…

> America and North Korea have both been doing it successfully for years.

Much is lost in this comparison. The American media landscape is pluralistic. Take for example our most popular news network: Fox News. Do they kowtow to the federal government? Russia + NK however, rely repressing dissent internally to retain legitimacy.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#50

Post by potrebitel22 »

TheLogothete wrote: post #4

Same type of thing happens in my Eastern European country, member of the EU and NATO. The pro-russian propaganda is rampant and honestly, is winning. The alternatives are only fascist organizations and people have nowhere to flock. US policy in recent years doesn't help at all. It is depressing.

Granted we talk for the same country, I hardly can call that a winning. There are stupid and mentally challenged people everywhere and they are easy to manipulate. There always be people from ex-Soviet satellites who still think USSR is the best thing the world has seen, so they just want to be fed such information, regardless is it Putin or someone else.

At one point the whole FB/Twitter agenda is made to spread news and events from "reliable" sources ( See how FB is used in USA's pee-presidential elections and its propaganda ). Russians, and not only them, the "creators" of social media exploit that opportunity for their gains. On one hand, Russia is trolling people, on the other, FB/Google/etc are forcing people to do stuff ( mainly to click on ads for revenue ) so can't blame one side or another for exploiting the system. Yes, one might say those are two different things, but at the end, the ordinary person is fed with a specific information, usually not wanted by him/her.

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