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posted by mrcoolbp on Monday April 06 2015, @01:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the пропаганда-сегодня dept.

Shaun Walker writes at The Guardian that that more and more posts and commentaries on the internet are generated by professional trolls in Russia who receive a salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online. 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 with hundreds of people working there in grinding, 12-hour shifts in exchange for 40,000 rubles ($700) a month.

According to Walker the work environment is humorless and draconian, with fines for being a few minutes late or not reaching the required number of posts each day. Trolls worked in rooms of about 20 people, each controlled by three editors, who would check posts and impose fines if they found the words had been cut and pasted, or were ideologically deviant. "There are production quotas, and for meeting your quota you get 45,000," says Marat Burkhard, who spent two months working at the troll factory. "The quota is 135 comments per 12-hour shift." Burkhart says that every city and village in Russia has its own municipal website with its own comments forum and the task of workers at the troll factory is to comment on each site. Burkhard explains how the professional trolls work in teams of three:

One of us would be the "villain," the person who disagrees with the forum and criticizes the authorities, in order to bring a feeling of authenticity to what we're doing. The other two enter into a debate with him -- "No, you're not right; everything here is totally correct." One of them should provide some kind of graphic or image that fits in the context, and the other has to post a link to some content that supports his argument. You see? Villain, picture, link.

We covered a similar story from BBC in March.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @02:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @02:59AM (#166834)

    Wow. I clicked on the comments only because I was going to post something about ZH. And look, first one up.

    The news stories were always a bit biased in a way that I chalked up to Russian support for nationalism resonating with the site runners in much the same way that it does with UKIP, FN, Jobbik, and the rest of the anti-EU/anti-Obama crowd; but son of a gun the comments on ZH went straight to troll-plaid ludicrous speed once the Ukrainian shit hit the fan. They must have their own division within the Russian troll factory, dedicated just to trolling the comments on ZeroHedge.

    For a while ZeroHedge was a GREAT place to get scoops on anything. I'd read it on ZH, mail a toned down version to friends, they'd see it on the news the next day and wonder where the hell I was getting all my info, because it was always early and right. There was no better source anywhere on the Cypriot banking crisis. Now, I don't even bother reading except for the morning front-running headline roundup. It's just a burned-out shell of a news site, overrun by trolls, with no stories except three-year-old rehashes of "Obama is going to ban guns, gold, and puppies: buy bitcoin."

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 06 2015, @12:24PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Monday April 06 2015, @12:24PM (#166932) Journal

    Perhaps the men in black paid a visit? Can't have informed public you know..