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The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

nytimes.com

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Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#61

Post by linkregister »

pessimizer wrote: post #38
aselzer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are certain that trolls derailed the conversation? It could just as well be one person stating his opinions. His opinions are controversal, and therefore they generate lots of responses (derailing) and he is downvoted because they go against what most people here believe. Doesn't quite seem like an army of professional "trolls" manipulating the discussion (If he is a troll, he would probably have presented his st…

For some reason (which I'm not sure isn't a reasonable amount of paranoia based on hard-won experience under the regime that Putin is running) some people believe that anyone who expresses the Western minority view that the conflict over Crimea isn't entirely Putin's fault, and that its population trying to cling to Russia isn't the worst, least understandable thing in the world is being paid by the Russian governmen…

I disagree with whoever down voted you. I think that worthwhile discussion here on HN is impossible without a well-articulated adversarial view. Otherwise, we're falling into an echo chamber.

I disagree with your opinion, but I'm glad you provided it. I wouldn't mind some support behind your assertion though.

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

blazespin wrote: post #59
astral303 wrote: post #26

My dad claims that the level of brainwashing in Russia far far exceeds that of the Soviet regime, and the propaganda is by far worse (and worse than WWII Germany he says). Of course statements like that evoke Godwin's law and a hard to swallow. However, my dad grew up in Soviet Russia and trained troops on the use of artillery equipment during the Soviet Afghanistan conflict. He's been around the block and has seen f…

Well they didn't really need propaganda in Russia. They had communism. Believe it or not some people actually believed that Communism is better than capitalism, and arguably at one time capitalism kind of sucked.

> Well they didn't really need propaganda in Russia. They had communism.

And how do you think they spread that and maintained it once it was spread? Propaganda.

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#63

Post by clarkmoody »

Retric wrote: post #27
astral303 wrote: post #26

My dad claims that the level of brainwashing in Russia far far exceeds that of the Soviet regime, and the propaganda is by far worse (and worse than WWII Germany he says). Of course statements like that evoke Godwin's law and a hard to swallow. However, my dad grew up in Soviet Russia and trained troops on the use of artillery equipment during the Soviet Afghanistan conflict. He's been around the block and has seen f…

The rest of the world has also gotten much better at propaganda. Listing to older broadcasts can almost seem laughable in comparison. EX: Reefer madness vs. modern anti-smoking campaigns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/24/cdc-smo... I find it deeply concerning how easily a modern state can alter how its population thinks. Outright lies are a lot easier to…

Embedding thoughts, mindsets, attitudes, and prejudices is very easy for a government to do when they control the curriculum requirements for the nation's children and discipline teachers when they stray from the official positions.

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#64

Post by dang »

ISL wrote: post #21

This sort of thing has happened recently on HN, where trolls derailed the conversation so badly that it was flagged into oblivion. (dang brought it back to life after an email appeal). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9570202 What's the right way for a community to permit free and welcoming discourse and simultaneously blunt the ability of malicious actors intent on spreading disinformation? It's a hard problem.

> recently on HN, where trolls derailed the conversation so badly

We found no evidence of trolling (in the sense of subversive shilling) in that thread. As far as I can tell, one commenter was who he said he was—an individual who felt passionately—and other commenters accused him because they didn't like what he said. His passion didn't help his cause, but he didn't deserve that.

Groundless accusations of astroturfing and shillage are not allowed on Hacker News. If the only evidence one has is "these comments seem so wrong to me", that's groundless. Accusations based merely on the strength of one's own opinions cost this community considerable health points, and we're not going to let it become a thing. If it gets worse, we'll make a top post about this, explicitly ban it, and add a rule about it to the guidelines. In the meantime, please flag such comments.

HN has users with many divergent views. The community spreads across countries where perspectives and politics are different from one's own [1]. It's common for X to seem obvious to one user while ~X seems obvious to another. Occam has no trouble accounting for most of what people call trolling, astroturfing, and shilling in controversial threads.

When any of you have concerns about astroturfing, you're welcome to send them to hn@ycombinator.com. We'll take them seriously. We'll also be careful and stick to what we can find evidence for.

1. This cross-cultural aspect of HN is a big deal. We see it all the time; I think it's underappreciated.

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#65

Post by guard-of-terra »

ceejayoz wrote: post #28
guard-of-terra wrote: post #17

I doubt about "well-paid" part. From the article you can deduct they're pair around 25k RUR/month, $500 in today exchange rate.

Wikipedia says that's around the average Russian wage.

"average wage" != "well paid in a large city".

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#66

Post by linkregister »

josefresco wrote: post #25
hackuser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that mainly produces pro-Putin propaganda, in both English and Russian. And also seems to be testing disinformation campaigns in the US, such as spreading panic about (fake) disasters.

I feel like this (testing disinformation campaigns within the US) wasn't addressed fully and is the most significant aspect of the "trolling" operations. Not many care if Russians are spreading lies to Russians about Putin, but attempting to cause panic in the US by faking a disaster is the most dangerous aspect of this practice.

I disagree, I believe that every cry of "Wolf!" regarding national disasters benefits the population at large, if only to desensitize them from sensational reports.

An analogy: do you know anyone who still falls for inheritance scam emails? Ten years ago, there were many reports of victims succumbing to fraud emails.

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#67

Post by notahacker »

astral303 wrote: post #26

My dad claims that the level of brainwashing in Russia far far exceeds that of the Soviet regime, and the propaganda is by far worse (and worse than WWII Germany he says). Of course statements like that evoke Godwin's law and a hard to swallow. However, my dad grew up in Soviet Russia and trained troops on the use of artillery equipment during the Soviet Afghanistan conflict. He's been around the block and has seen f…

I dunno about sophisticated. The presumably failed experiment with the #ColombianChemicals hoax was almost cute in its lack of direction or success[1]. It sounds like the sort of hoax Anonymous - teenagers without leadership or direction or payment - would successfully have pulled off. And the ironic thing is that even if they had the wherewithal to actually convince people, the rumour would barely have moved the needle compared with the hornets nests stirred up on a daily basis by rumours (true and false) spread by the mainstream Western press (much of which is sufficiently unprofitable for the price of influence to be affordable, incidentally[2])

If Russian propagandists are generally active in the Western media, it's difficult to view them as particularly effective: you'd have found more Western contemporaries willing to sympathise with Stalin than Putin, even during the McCarthy era, and Obama's approval ratings aren't doing too badly. I can't judge their effectiveness in Russian media, but I doubt that a particularly large proportion of the promoters of nationalism and bigotry are on Putin's payroll.... its not like their ilk is exactly nonexistent in the West.

Goebbels' message might have been more top-down and less subtle than Russia's social media spamming, but it did convince a reasonably well educated and well-to-do population that there was absolutely nothing wrong with rounding up all the Jews to deport, and convince the rest of Europe there was nothing to be particularly concerned about. That takes a little more effort than persuading Russians the West doesn't like them very much.

[1]to the extent that false explosion reports on September 11th can be considered cute

[2]Four mainstream British newspapers actually are owned by a wealthy Russian, though he's far too involved with Russian opposition parties to be inclined towards toning down their pretty standard critical editorial line on Russian policy

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#68

Post by Freedom123tp »

serg_chernata wrote: post #36
astral303 wrote: post #26

My dad claims that the level of brainwashing in Russia far far exceeds that of the Soviet regime, and the propaganda is by far worse (and worse than WWII Germany he says). Of course statements like that evoke Godwin's law and a hard to swallow. However, my dad grew up in Soviet Russia and trained troops on the use of artillery equipment during the Soviet Afghanistan conflict. He's been around the block and has seen f…

I was born and raised in Ukraine till I turned 14. Still have most of my family there and they visit regularly. They were present during most of the revolution and I can confirm nothing but love and pride to be Ukrainian. All that talk about Ukrainian nazi is garbage. Yes, we aren't perfect and we may have difficulties bringing order but it was all done with good intentions at heart. Most recent revolutions, includin…

Ukraine is no better than Russia and in some cases is even worse. Ukraine has a serious Nazi problem. While in Russia one oppositionist Nemstov was murdered, soon after in Ukraine as many as 8 opposition MEPs were murdered (allegedly committing suicide). The Ukrainian nationalists claimed responsibility for the murders. [1]

Recently the Ukrainian parliament has passed a law (act 2538) that forbids questioning the heroism of fascist organizations such as OUN UPA and their leader Stepan Bandera - which are responsible for massacring and ethnic cleansing 200 000 Polish women and children in the Volhynia Massacre. [2] Stepan Bandera which also was a Nazi collaborator is commonly regarded as Ukraine's national hero by most of them.

1: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-22/nationalist-group-t...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia...

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#69

Post by tptacek »

tdees40 wrote: post #8

If you don't feel like reading it, this is an amusing tale of one arm of the pro-Kremlin propaganda machine. The kicker is at the end when Russian propaganda sources tried to make it seem as if the reporter were recruiting Nazis for a complicated CIA scheme.

Think about that: we know Adrian Chen did not in fact go to Russia to make common cause with neo-Nazi groups, so the most likely interpretation of those photos is: some or all of that neo-Nazi group is on the payroll of Russian propaganda groups.

Re: The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg

#70

Post by nostrebored »

criley2 wrote: post #34
scarmig wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you'd agree with it or not, but I'd want to emphasize something: this behavior is not limited to foreign governments that have antithetical interests to the USA. Even publicly, the CIA recognizes that it has teams of employees working on social media to push people (particularly in the Middle East) to support positions more consistent with American interests. And it'd surely be pretty damn profitable…

Israel commands a small army of these as well, it's almost comical to see them appearing in social media and comment sections, but I have no doubt they're effective. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...

I do think it's strange that when Israel promotes nationalism in it's clearly more controversial status -- being defamed by all of its neighbors and a large segment of the western left and right -- suddenly this is a bad thing. If we had (serious) pressure to dissolve the U.S., I think we would see a backlash of equal or greater measure. Your use of language here also clearly shows your position: 'army' is a very harsh word to use for some students posting on social media.
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