Thousands of them sprang forth from the seams of social media this week, just before Putin’s insane invasion of Ukraine. Russian troll accounts. Twitter seems to be one of their favorite environments to infest.
Some varieties have found an advantage in dressing up as Republican stalwarts, while others like to present themselves as ultra-ultra-Lefty purists who claim there is no distinction between Democrats and Republicans. These tricks can fool the untrained eye.
But if you browse through the “content” posted by any one of these creatures, you’ll find an ADHD-style mixture of rants about imaginary genocides against Russian-speaking people, claims about Ukraine being run by Nazis, and memes portraying Putin as a defender of white Christian values.
There’s no point debating them. Russian trolls can both drink you under the table and argue incoherently until you pass out from exhaustion. The Russian F.S.B. hires them specifically for their stamina.
Some of these trolls have been instructed to follow the accounts of elected officials in a particular western state or region, so you might see the same one posting in response to the tweets of several of your federal and state representatives.
As you know, trolls hate sunlight because it reveals exactly what they are. You can help with that.
If you happen across one of these trolls, and if you wish to make their work unrewarding, just put a tweet alongside their own troll-y one calling attention to the fact that @PatrioticAmericaPerson is in fact a Russian troll.
Don’t reply directly to their tweets. That gives them a certain power to block you and hide your replies. Just post into the same thread where they posted, and call them out without debate:
“Just a reminder that ‘PatrioticAmericaPerson’ is a Russian troll account.”
If the troll blocks you anyway, you can still track their posting activity using an alternate Twitter account and then shine the light on them in the same thread with your main account.