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Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

theguardian.com

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Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#321

Post by RobertRoberts »

philwelch wrote: post #318
RobertRoberts wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will restate my original post, which I agree with you could have been more ideally written: "I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of multiple industries." Since this was my intent to state in the first place, do you disagree with this because you think it's impossible? Or because you think it's unlikely? Or some other reason? The o…

If you're so eager to shrug off the burden of proof, you have no business making those kinds of claims in the first place.

The burden of proof on this subject is incredibly low. Corporate espionage has been around for a long time, this is far less damaging/shocking/expensive than that.

I'd say it's almost a forgone conclusion that it's happening.

Edit: From 2015

https://curiousmatic.com/professional-trolls/

Link in the article to Monsanto trolling:

https://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-and-others-caught-paying...

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#322

Post by fauigerzigerk »

wpietri wrote: post #320
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionaires also have plenty of ways to influence large numbers of non-billionaires. They can own media empires and think tanks, fund/lobby politicians and political movements with armies of volunteers, or become media personalities themselves. I would be interested in an analysis of who funds those troll campaigns. I'd wager billionaires rank very far below governments, political parties and corporations.

Again, that they have other tools doesn't mean that they want to give up this one. And they're not more likely to just because those groups use it. Indeed, governments and political parties are generally quite solicitous of the interests of the very rich. [1] As, of course, are corporations. [1] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...

>Again, that they have other tools doesn't mean that they want to give up this one.

It means that disinformation is relatively less important to billionaires compared to others.

Not sure what the linked article has to do with it.

Edit: The reason why I'm even debating this not very important difference is that I feel that structural issues with our political and economic system are too often obscured and trivialised by blaming it all on powerful evil individuals.

For instance, billionaires want the companies they own shares in to make as much money as possible. CEOs who measure their success in increasing share prices are therefore incentivised to occasionally break the law.

Does that mean billionaires wanted or even told the CEO to break the law? Not necessarily. Does it mean CEOs wouldn't break the law if the shares were owned by a pension fund and not by billionaires? No.

So there are more complex structural issues that shouldn't get buried in too much finger pointing at rich individuals. Of course that doesn't mean there are no evil billionaires or that some of them wouldn't like to own a personal troll army. Who knows.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#324

Post by myama »

Yuval_Halevi wrote: post #21

The sentence 'There is no such thing as bad publicity' Talks exactly about cases like this. The polish PR firm is about to get a wave of leads from this 'negative PR'

Also, some clients concerned with the negative association will decide to move to another firm.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#326

Post by nomel »

specialist wrote: post #243
nomel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re trivializing the difficulty in categorizing the low quality, and extremely brief, comments of social media. Go look at a political subreddit, or some controversial tweet. There’s little conversation or context. Most users could be bots. Google often has the advantage of having hard (url) or soft (product/key word mention) links that point to something extremely rare and “unimportant”. Everyone is bitch…

How could they not know?

This would be a great pet project to work on, to get a good understanding of why it's not easy. Plus, if you succeed, you'll be incredibly wealthy.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#327

Post by erikpukinskis »

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #209
yeahforsureman wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. Sadly, the sole existence of troll farms is enough to create and reinforce political paranoia. Your message (parent) here, for example, is exactly the kind of stuff I've come to associate with Russian and similar trolling (sowing distrust in institutions etc.)...

But you have to be extremely naive to not believe it. Work somewhere near marketing and you realize everything is shilled upon you. The politicians have used these tricks hundreds of years ago, things are just different with a new platform. Have you thought about the idea that you yourself are a victim of a marketing department if you believe every criticism is related to Russian campaigns?

> if you believe every criticism is related to Russian campaigns.

That’s not the claim, and you hyperbolizing that way is a classic technique for muddying the waters.

> everything is shilled on you

That’s simply not true. There are many shills, but not everyone is a shill.

There is a difference between responsible marketing and lying. Every institution has to choose which they engage in.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#328

Post by erikpukinskis »

criley2 wrote: post #296
hos234 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. All this activity whether its legitimate volunteers OR trolls has not generated any real sustainable outcomes. Both are just mindlessly trying to hit metrics(like/views/clicks/upvotes etc). And everyone is very satisfied hitting them. But nobody has yet proved in any country, in any part of the world all this mindless metric hitting activity (amplified robotically by the news media) is actually produci…

And I view this as false equivalence. Americans clicking like for American content is fundamentally different than an influence campaign by military intelligence to engage in psyops against us. It's sad and shocking that folks treat a massive attack on the US homeland as "equivalent to Hillary fans posting comments on Reddit". It really goes to show you how America is failing here: if no one will defend the homeland…

It is sorta interesting though, your “it’s different, it’s ok if Americans do it” line is actually kinda anti-liberal. I mean, no borders, no one is illegal, Russian troll farmers get their vote too?

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#329

Post by specialist »

nomel wrote: post #326
specialist wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could they not know?

This would be a great pet project to work on, to get a good understanding of why it's not easy. Plus, if you succeed, you'll be incredibly wealthy.

Ah. So it's my job to watch dog Facebook? Proving what we know must be true? Because reasons. And me performing this due diligence is going to make me fabulously wealthy? Because magic.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#330

Post by haecceity »

ajuc wrote: post #193
alkonaut wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a party did that in a country where voters respond appropriately to this kind of thing, that political party would be wiped out for a generation. If a party manages to dupe people into thinking their populist cause is important enough to see past the use of troll factories for message control, then that I think says a lot about the health of a democracy. I can imagine this happening in Poland, Hungary or perhaps e…

In case of Poland the party increased social spending several times, paying people with 2 kids half the median salary every month and lowering retirement age. They could go on TV saying "we are corrupt and we are stealing from you" and they would still win these elections just because they paid for the votes. That's how populism works. Frankly I'm amazed they managed to lose the Senate and only won the Sejm (lower ho…

How do they afford it?
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