The following was posted in the comments by
January 11 · 03:02:14 PM
I thought it very enlightening
the Russian troll efforts are divided up into categories. There’s some basic information in this 538 Article, and when it case out I wrote this diary with some analysis. The Russian efforts attempt to corral users into categories where they can be placed into a bubble that provides propaganda aimed at catering to their preconceived views.
A Russian “right troll,” working to create a massive database of right-leaning Americans, is pretty straightforward since the Russians are currently trying to bolster Trump and the GOP. A right troll will foster posts that equate Trumpism to being “as American as apple pie.” They will foster discontent with the left, and anyone who opposes Trump. They talk politics all day long, often very policy-centric. They act as basically a few billion dollars-worth of free advertising, kind of like being Fox News 2. (🤮)
What you are talking about are “left trolls,” which are almost as prolific as right trolls, but engaged in a more complicated effort. They pose as left-leaning groups, activists or voters, and their purpose is to divide the Democratic Party. They often use race to do so — a lot of them pose as black activists and use movements like Black Lives Matter to foster anger at the Democratic Party, to insinuate that Democrats like Hillary Clinton are racist, and to suppress voter turnout. Others posed as Sanders / Green supporters encouraging voters to either vote 3rd party or stay home. And some pose as voters attacking Sanders/Greens, which can be used to motivate those databases.
Then there are other troll profile types that accomplish other things...in part to farm users and sort them into the right/left ecosystems.
The effort is a sort of pyramid scheme, in a way. There are not that many Russian individuals engaged in this. They farm profiles and curate their networks in order to recruit thousands and thousands of Americans to do their dirty work for them. Once a left troll has a database of, say, 150k users, the IRA can then coordinate putting those users to work with the right message at the right time.
If Hillary Clinton had a good day, they might decide to use their right trolls to foster a message that Trump did something awesome. Then they’d bring the left trolls in to regurgitate the story about how she said “super predators” one time, and they’d get their army of left-leaning profiles posting that all over. Some left trolls would also attack the super predators story as “stupid,” and rile up those who didn’t think the same. So the Clinton campaign would be trying to get her message about port security out, and on the Internet you’d have hundreds of thousands of people working to ensure that didn’t happen.
January 11 · 03:02:14 PM