Working as a Professional Troll

Generali

http://www.rferl.org/content/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html

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.

padington

Generali wrote: »

http://www.rferl.org/content/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html

I would be gobsmacked if Labour and the Tories didn't have small troll team each working mumsnet and here etc.

Not the same thing though, that would probably be done by volunteers who believed in what they were saying.

Generali

padington wrote: »

I would be gobsmacked if Labour and the Tories didn't have small troll team each working mumsnet and here etc.

Not the same thing though, that would probably be done by volunteers who believed in what they were saying.

The SNP seem to!

kabayiri

padington wrote: »

I would be gobsmacked if Labour and the Tories didn't have small troll team each working mumsnet and here etc.

Not the same thing though, that would probably be done by volunteers who believed in what they were saying.

I know some people who were floating the idea of a "reputation management" company a few years back. This was specifically online reputation.

It seems they have succeeded, if you do enough digging.

It's very easy to kill a line of conversation in a thread if it is anti-big water or energy companies or banks. It would be an economical way of protecting a reputation.

This area will become more important over time. A company like British Gas spends a lot of money managing communications both externally and internally.

antrobus

padington wrote: »

I would be gobsmacked if Labour and the Tories didn't have small troll team each working mumsnet and here etc.

Not the same thing though, that would probably be done by volunteers who believed in what they were saying.

They all do. And you're right, the overwhelming majority of them don't get paid; they do it for the 'cause'. Although it's often not that particularly well organised.

Thrugelmir

padington wrote: »

I would be gobsmacked if Labour and the Tories didn't have small troll team each working mumsnet and here etc.

Haven't you noticed how the media gets directed by the Political spin doctors every week.

padington

To put the other side of the coin, I've got a very good old friend that runs a PR company for the big corporates and he says it's only a matter of time before the issue of corporate espionage comes to surface. Big money has been spent hacking pressure groups that challenge the work of big business.

Almost everyone has their hands dirty who has a group challenging the key business model. Obviously it is all subcontracted out and the trail very difficult to prove but apparently it's an industry in itself.

.... And this work is paid, highly paid.

Corporate spin however, isn't even a word in use.

michaels

I have long assumed that bbc hys was targeted with comments submitted early and voted up quickly.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

michaels wrote: »

I have long assumed that bbc hys was targeted with comments submitted early and voted up quickly.

Sure, happens all the time now, from a whole host of political parties and other groups with vested interests in seeing a particular outcome to any given issue.

Look at the comments on any media story on house prices, and chances are it's been linked to from hpc and comment-bombed accordingly.

They can muster up many hundreds, or occasionally even a few thousand, poll votes, like/dislike, or red/green arrow responses to any housing story or it's comments.

You can usually spot the time the article was linked to on hpc by the sudden rush of comments. It's also usually the case that the comments were far more balanced before it got linked.

Same thing happens with CyberNats on Scottish politics articles, Conservative supporters on Labour articles and Labour supporters on Tory articles, etc...

Generali

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Sure, happens all the time now, from a whole host of political parties and other groups with vested interests in seeing a particular outcome to any given issue.

Look at the comments on any media story on house prices, and chances are it's been linked to from hpc and comment-bombed accordingly.

They can muster up many hundreds, or occasionally even a few thousand, poll votes, like/dislike, or red/green arrow responses to any housing story or it's comments.

You can usually spot the time the article was linked to on hpc by the sudden rush of comments. It's also usually the case that the comments were far more balanced before it got linked.

Same thing happens with CyberNats on Scottish politics articles, Conservative supporters on Labour articles and Labour supporters on Tory articles, etc...

It's interesting in these times of social media and so on what constitutes a campaign to get a particular message out and what is a consequence of what I put on Facebook.

Imagine that I am a 22 y/o passionate SNP supporter who is eating my fried Mars Bar for breakfast with a mug of Buckie (milk and two sugars ta) to wash it down whilst sitting at my PC at work at Bailed Out Investment Bank Corp. I notice an article on the BBC that states that the evil Westminster Tories are going to reintroduce baby eating.

What does an earnest, slightly drunk political activist like me do about this? I click the share button on Facetweet of course. That'll show 'em. So then my fellow Young Nationalists see the story and they share it.

It's not that I am particularly looking to share this stuff with SNP supporters as such but the nature of these things is that I've Liked the Young Edinburgh Nats and then there's the nice looking girls I met while handing out leaflets that time and of course most of us down the pub are vaguely Nats of one sort or another.

So I shared this with a few hundred people and perhaps 50 of them shared it on with a few hundred people each albeit with plenty of overlap there. I reckon that even if I'm the only sharer, which with the BBC is unlikely, my post could easily hit hundreds of thousands before the end of the day.

If a few of them decide to comment then the BBC is besieged with Nationalist comments below the line.

fordcapri2000

"Working as a Professional Troll"

There are a handful on this very board, I have no doubts about it.

The rigged property market in the UK(and it is rigged) is worth Billions/100's Billions, a lot of people stand to make/lose a lot of money or even gain power should it trend one way or the other.