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'We all were doing the same job filled with lies,' says employee tasked with churning out misinformation to undermine Ukraine and the US
by Jeremy B White, San Francisco; independent.co.uk — Nov 17, 2017
A former employee of a Russian troll factory responsible for producing misinformation aimed at undermining Western institutions has told how workers toiled to create a “merry-go-round of lies”.
The former employee of the Internet Research Agency, identified by American intelligence as a Kremlin-linked troll farm, spoke out to shine a light on a murky world set on fomenting social unrest and distrust.
[...]
Around 126 million of them [Americans] saw one of the roughly 80,000 Facebook posts the Internet Research Agency disseminated and amplified through ad purchases. Twitter released a list of more than 2,700 accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, part of a Russian campaign that the company said enlisted more than 36,000 accounts.
[American intelligence officials believe the Internet Research Agency is financed by an ally of President Vladimir Putin with ties to Russian intelligence ...]
by Ben Popken and Kelly Cobiella, Investigations; NBCnews.com — Nov 16, 2017
[Vitaly] Bespalov described how his own work centered on discrediting Ukraine, but that others in the building focused solely on the U.S.
Workers in the “American department” were paid the equivalent of between $1,300 to $2,000 a month for sparking social media uproar. Entry level trolls got only about $1,000 a month with paid bonuses.
[...]
The objective was to have the articles be "70 percent" original text and get them to the top of search engine results, Bespalov said.
[...]
At one point, Bespalov worked to create social media profiles to boost pro-Russian sentiment. One account that existed for “quite a long while” used profile photos from a Moscow journalist, Bespalov told NBC News.
“So, you can imagine yourself logging in to Facebook and you see there an account with your photos but another person's name," he said. [...]
Vitaly Bespalov tells NBC News that he was part of a “factory of lies” in Russia that churned out fake stories as part of a growing campaign to spread false information. Though the Kremlin has denied these operations even existed, he believes they are still up and running.
from the clip:
Interviewer: So you believe this operation was backed by the Kremlin?
Bespalov: Absolutely. It's still up and running.
So much for Putin’s sincere denials about such “active” Election Interference. And Trump’s desperate pleas to Americans, to let by-gones be by-gones …
“It's still up and running,” according to this Russian Insider.
Question is, WHAT is Congress going to DO about it?