A Former Russian 'Troll Factory' Employee Speaks Out

Birmingham MI

Description

The money wasn’t bad, but the work was demanding: posting up to 120 comments a day, over an 11-hour shift -- in chat rooms, on websites, and in social-media profiles belonging to specific Russian-language news outlets such as the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and RFE/RL’s Russian Service. “There were people who really flew at [the work] with enthusiasm, and then some who came to work just realizing that all they were doing was nonsense,” Sergei K., a former employee of a Russian company that became known as the “Russian troll factory,” told RFE/RL in an interview. Such was life at the St. Petersburg firm whose registered name used to be the Internet Research Agency and which earned its moniker by pumping out conspiracy theories, half-truths, trolling social-media posts, and other misinformation. Owned by a St. Petersburg businessman named Yevgeny Prigozhin, the operation gained international infamy when it was specifically identified in the 2017 U.S. intelligence report on Russian efforts to interfere in the previous year’s presidential election. “Masquerading as Americans, these operatives used targeted advertisements, intentionally falsified news articles, self-generated content, and social-media platform tools to interact with and attempt to deceive tens of millions of social-media users in the United States,” a follow-up report by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said. https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-troll-factory-hacking/31076160.html