Inside A Russian Troll Factory

Charles Maynes, PRI's The World/Business Insider: A Russian 'troll slayer' went undercover at a troll factory and found that hundreds of Russians were working as paid trolls in rotating shifts

* "Troll slayer" and journalist Lyudmila Savchuk when undercover at a troll factory for two and a half months to see how it works.
* Savchuk found that the organization was broken up into departments: "news division," the "social media seeders", and a group dedicated to producing visual memes known as " demotivators."
* The operation was run by a local restaurateur who was placed under US sanctions for attempting to interfere with US elections.
* Savchuk believed her work would help Facebook understand how its platform could be gamed, but no longer believes the fight against trolls is winnable.

When a journalist heard a bot organization was hiring writers, she went for it.

Slaying online trolls can be a lonely business. Just ask Russia's Lyudmila Savchuk, who first exposed the story of Russia's disinformation campaign back in 2014.

The journalist and 33-year-old mother of two, Savchuk started noticing websites and social media accounts attacking local opposition activists in her hometown of Saint Petersburg with a frequency she hadn't seen before.

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WNU Editor: This is old news. CNN covered it last year .... How the Russians did it (CNN).