One Professional Russian Troll Tells All
"All the curtains are kept closed," says former professional Russian troll Marat Burkhard. "We're all forbidden from going out on the street during the day."
By Dmitry Volchek and Daisy Sindelar
March 25, 2015
More and more, posts and commentaries on the Internet in Russia and even abroad are generated by professional trolls, many of whom receive a higher-than-average salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online.
There are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia's most famous "troll factory," the Internet Research center, an unassuming building on St. Petersburg's Savushkina Street, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work grinding, 12-hour shifts in exchange for 40,000 rubles ($700) a month or more.
St. Petersburg blogger Marat Burkhard spent two months working at Internet Research in the department tasked with clogging the forums on Russia's municipal websites with pro-Kremlin comments. In the following interview, he describes a typical day and the type of assignments he encountered. ...
... We don't talk, because we can see for ourselves what the others are writing, but in fact you don't even have to really read it, because it's all nonsense. The news gets written, someone else comments on it, but I think real people don't bother reading any of it at all.
... We create the illusion of actual activity on these forums. We write something, we answer each other. There are keywords, tags, that are needed for search engines. We're given five keywords -- for example, "Shoigu," "defense minister," "Russian army." All three of us have to make sure these keywords appear all over the place in our comments. They can't even be conjugated or declined. Sometimes it's very hard to write when you can't use any declensions!
St. Petersburg's Internet Research center
A TYPICAL ASSIGNMENT
Topic: NATO troops are embedded with Ukrainian armed forces
Keywords: ukraine news, russia and ukraine, ukraine policy, ukraine, NATO, PMC (private military company)
Task: Raise this topic on 35 municipal forums
Work begins after an initial post, written by a troll in a different department, is published on the LiveJournal social-networking site under the username flcrbgrjn. The post argues that foreign mercenaries are fighting on the side of Ukrainian soldiers and
links to a video that purports to show two American soldiers in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
"The Kyiv junta regularly sics its media on Russia, and they lie shamelessly and recklessly. They argue Russian armed forces are fighting on the territory of Ukraine, but they refuse to provide any proof (because there isn't any). But when it comes to the matter of Ukrainian armed forces, the American puppets entrenched in Kyiv say there's no evidence that foreign mercenaries and Western intelligence agents are joining their ranks -- they lie and don't even blush!"
...
Burkhard: Yes, that's right, the Ministry of Truth. You work in the Ministry of Truth, which is the Ministry of Lies, and everyone kind of believes in this truth. Yes, you're right, it's Orwell.
...
Jatkuu artikkelissa:
http://www.rferl.org/content/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html
Kyllä me silti sinusta tykätään! Tosin trolliroskis alkanee häämöttää tämän nimimerkkisi kohdalla...
