Russia's troll factories were, at one point, likely being paid by the Kremlin to spread pro-Trump propaganda on social media. That is what freelance. The office of London’s mayor has secured millions to fund a police “online hate crime hub” in 'partnership with social media providers'. Trolls TrailerOne Professional Russian Troll Tells All. 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, Live. Journal, and v. Kontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia's most famous . Petersburg's Savushkina Street, which runs on a 2. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work grinding, 1. 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. Marat Burkhard. Why did you decide to write there? Adventurism? Marat Burkhard: Yes, adventurism is the right word. Because in my opinion, this kind of work doesn't exist anywhere else. RFE/RL: Was it hard to get the job? Burkhard: Yes, it was hard. You have to write sample texts first, and then they decide if you're suitable for the work. They weed people out that way. RFE/RL: What kind of texts? Burkhard: First they make you write something neutral - - Vegetarianism: Pros And Cons. After that, the assignments start to get more to the point - - for example, what do I think about humanitarian convoys in Donetsk? Man Poses as Target on Facebook, Trolls Haters of Its Gender-Neutral Move With Epic Replies A feisty customer rep By Tim Nudd. In this month's issue of Personality and Individual Differences, a study was published that confirms what we all suspected: Internet trolls are horrible people. Troll shop Original Norwegian design since 1964. Handmade unbreakable trolls made of natural materials. Valuable international collector's item. RFE/RL: Were you forced to hide your real beliefs? Burkhard: Yes, I'm pro- Western. That's natural for me and for them, of course, it's not. I didn't write anything about my views. Otherwise, they wouldn't have hired me; they would have thrown me out immediately. They're constantly running ideological checks on everything you write. I got caught a couple of times; I had some irresponsible moments. RFE/RL: Did they immediately offer you a salary of 4. Burkhard: No, I got it immediately - - as long as I met my quota. There are production quotas, and for meeting your quota you get 4. The quota is 1. 35 comments per 1. RFE/RL: How many departments are there at Internet Research? Burkhard: It's a modern building, four floors. There's a Live. Journal department, a news department, a department where they create all sorts of images and demotivators (Editor's Note: Demotivators are satirical graphics that tend to undermine their subject matter), a department where they make videos. But I was never in those departments. Each of them has its own office, tables, and computers, and no one prowls around from place to place. Everyone stays in their spot. RFE/RL: How many people were in your department? Burkhard: Twenty. RFE/RL: Did you work 1. Burkhard: Yes. There were daytime and nighttime shifts. RFE/RL: Did you need to sit in the office or was it possible to work from home? Burkhard: There's no working by remote. At night, a different shift comes in. I worked the day shift. RFE/RL: So you sit in an office for 1. Why such gigantic shifts? Burkhard: It's two days on, two days off. So they figure that you need to work 1. RFE/RL: So what did your department do? Burkhard: Our department commented on posts. Every city and village in Russia has its own municipal website with its own comments forum. People would write something on the forum - - some kind of news - - and our task was to comment on it. We did it by dividing into teams of three. One of us would be the . The other two enter into a debate with him - - . Villain, picture, link. RFE/RL: So all three of you sit together, agreeing on who's going to do what in this performance? Burkhard: Yeah, that's the kind of absurdity that goes on. We don't talk too much, because everyone is busy. A single comment isn't supposed to be less than 2. You have to just sit there and type and type, endlessly. 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. So in this way, our little threesome traverses the country, stopping at every forum, starting with Kaliningrad and ending in Vladivostok. 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, . 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 ASSIGNMENTTopic: 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 3. Work begins after an initial post, written by a troll in a different department, is published on the Live. Journal 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. 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! Then the Villain Troll, working under the name Yana. So they filmed some kind of American there, so what? It's still not clear what they were doing there. Russia as usual blames Ukraine for the things it's doing itself. Everyone's been talking about your own mercenaries for a long time, and you still haven't pulled them out!? If you're up to date with the topic, you should know how much evidence has already been provided that shows the war in Ukraine is continuing because the West and Poroshenko are reluctant to pursue peace. They've found things belonging to Western soldiers, and now they've found the soldiers themselves. Have they found proof that Russian troops are in Ukraine? It's a policy of double standards!! Southeast, sit down, don't make a fuss, and put up with it. After Astrakhan comes Biysk. And from there, Bryansk, Veliky Novgorod, Vladivostok, Volgograd, two forums in Voronezh, several Russian- wide forums - - for example Chupakabra - - and, at the end of the Russian alphabet, Chita and Cherepovets. There are few other comments, but the theme flies to the top of Yandex. RFE/RL: Marat, can you recall the strangest or funniest task that your team was given? Burkhard: The funniest was when U. S. President Barack Obama chewed gum in India and then spit it out. Write whatever you want, just stick the word Obama in there a lot and then cover it over with profanities. You stick him in ancient India and he chews gum there. It's funny in the sense that they're ready to grab onto any little thing. On the other hand, it's not funny. It's absurd and it crosses a line. RFE/RL: The main task of the factory is to write on visitor forums, in particular forums run by Russia's ideological enemies. Who does that? Burkhard: There's a Ukrainian department, an English department. They bombard the websites of CNN and the BBC. They have their own type of targets - - The New York Times, not the Samara city site. It's a little simpler for us, of course. The system is very repressive. If you're late by a minute, there's already a 5. Didn't they offer you a position in one of the foreign departments? Burkhard: They did. I had a job interview in the English department, but they started to ask me about my beliefs, to which I replied that I was apolitical, I don't know anything, I don't follow anything. Apparently, that ended my prospects there. To get a job with them, I should have answered that I follow certain trains of thought. The salary for employees with foreign language skills is more than 4. RFE/RL: And are some of the people working on social networks - - on Facebook, in particular? Burkhard: Yes, there are special people working on Facebook. There are about 4. They write and write all day, and it's no laughing matter - - you can get fired for laughing. And so every day, any news does the trick - - it could be Obama, could be . Even a political scientist can't be an expert about the entire world, but here people are expected to write about everything. And how you write doesn't matter; you can praise or scold. You just have put those keywords in. Then, in order to plump up the political content, they send in a guy to talk about the topic of the day, so that at least the employees have a little background on the topic. But the guy himself has an extremely low level of understanding, so it all looks completely absurd. Incidentally, they gave us a test on ideology, with 1. Anyone who makes a couple of mistakes has to retake it. But anyone who's simply hopeless just gets fired. RFE/RL: What do they ask on the exam? Burkhard: For example: . Or, for example, easier questions like . That's how the assignment was worded - - . It's funny to write, . For example, for Orthodox Christmas, Putin went to Mass at an ordinary village church outside Voronezh and there was sweetness and light all around. A story gets posted along the lines of, ? Yes, he's popular, but he doesn't need popularity, he just wants to meet with ordinary people. The post about Putin is prefaced by a fragment from a poem by Marina Tsvetayeva, . Christmas unites! The blessed holiday of the Nativity is upon us. And on such a miraculous day, which unites all citizens of Russia - - no matter whether you're a believer or, as they say, ! Where else but in the provinces, far away from the urban hustle and bustle, is it possible to really experience this holy day?
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