Moscow Times: Soldier in Russia's Troll Army Sues Her Ex-Employer
A former Internet "troll" who had been hired to promote political views online is suing her former employer in an attempt to draw attention to Russia's "information war" technologies, a news report said Friday.
The grounds for the lawsuit filed by Lyudmila Savchuk, which is expected to be heard by a St. Petersburg city court next month, is the employer's failure to provide any labor contract or other paperwork supporting her hiring and eventual dismissal, Kommersant reported.
Savchuk said she was fired after speaking to the media about her employer, Internet Research, which she described as part of Russia's "troll factory," according to the report.
Update: Russia steps up propaganda push with online "Kremlin trolls" -- AP
WNU Editor: When I am on Russian social media sites .... you can always spot the "troll" .... or at least most of the time. The sites that I go to are always the ones who state what is their personal opinion on a subject (at least that way I know where they stand), and those who identify their news sources .... a practice that I also employ for War News Updates.
8 comments:
WNU Editor,
Governments and Organizations all over the world do this, with varying layers of transparency,
It's called "managing Social Media",
The really sad thing is, the Internet really doesn't need more trolls.
A small admission Jay .... when I get the trolls on this site I always roll my eyes with the sad realization that I have just lost 5 seconds of my life.
WNU Editor,
During the Iraq War run up, there were some pretty sophisticated trolls, run out of the Neo-Con NGO's, on the political forums.
They were working off " cheat sheets" of arguments and counter arguments that could waste dozens of hours in the back and forth.
They would argue A, that would be disproved,
Then they would switch to Bthat would be disproved,
Then onto C,......
Sometimes all the way down to X,
Then, three or four days later, new stenography by the MSM would have it back on the Forums, and the exact same poster, our under a new ID, or a new poster, would be back with argument A,.....
Fairly quickly I wrote several "essays", summarizing the whole flow and counterflow of the debates that would take place, with a fair bit of insults and demeaning, saved them in Word, and would use them to quickly shut down the trolls.
Now, Governments and Corporations are writing algorithms to troll social media and shut down dissent, mostly through fatigue.
At least right now, the Hasbara program is too busy trying to smear BDS and defend against the War Crimes charges to show up here. that's a good thing.
You are right about this .... "Now, Governments and Corporations are writing algorithms to troll social media and shut down dissent, mostly through fatigue". That is why hiring human operators is so passe .... Russia's web/programming community is very good .... so why hire humans?
This type of trolling is now coming from all sides and from all corners of the world. I remember reading an article on Rush Limbaugh spending an incredible amount of money to track down the trolls who were trying to shut them down. He discovered that much of this was coming from 12 individuals/groups .... he exposed them .... the trolling stop.
But his case is insignificant when we analyze how these mediums are used to promote wars and conflicts .... you pointed out accurately yesterday on the same-old same-old on Russia building up its forces on the Ukraine border, and I suspect that you will agree with me that we are not seeing the same tactics being used to promote U.S. ground troops in Iraq.
WNU Editor,
"Ground troops in Iraq" is an election killer for the Dems, and while a topic of discussion amongst the most radical GOP'ers, they also realize it won't win them any votes.
The US Public have War Fatigue.
Trial Balloon Op-Eds have been floated in the MSM, but get shouted down in the comments.
After the election will be a different matter.
jay could it be possible for you to put up one of them sumamarizers you say you did back anout the trolling then would love to see somthing like that on what you did during iraq war thanks
Russia has the most powerful military in the world so we should do what they say.
PETER,
I don't have them anymore, after all, that was '99 to '03,
And what I learned from the forums over those years, is "posters" already have their minds made up, and while "life experience" might change their opinions, facts won't.
If they get tired of being disproven, they just leave the forum.
On one of most notorious shills on one of the sites was "Texas Mom", and she dropped off the site in '03, didn't come back until '07, and what changed her mind on some aspects, was her sending her two son's to Iraq to be killed and crippled.
Now a days, the "worst" of them on the political forums ( where the subject interests me), suffer from PDS, (Putin Derangement Syndrome),
All I do with those, is point out that they suffer from PDS, point out that there is a cure, and provide a link to one of those sites that spams your viewer with the Viagra pop up ads.
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