The IRA pays the person they hired to build a cage for a "Florida Goes Trump" rally in West Palm Beach, Florida. )wJkCsG When I got the job there in 2013 it was a small building, I was working in the basement, and it was clear they didnt have enough space, said Andrei Soshnikov, a St Petersburg journalist who infiltrated the company two years ago and has continued to cover it. 3 litera A pom. Savchuk, who considers herself a freelance investigative journalist and activist for free and fair elections, spent most of her time at the troll farm writing as an imaginary Russian woman on the LiveJournal blogging platform, widely used in Russia today. "", "Trump administration announces new sanctions on Russians charged in the Mueller investigation", "Crimial Complaint against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova", "Timeline: How Russian trolls allegedly tried to throw the 2016 election to Trump", United States District Court for the District of Columbia, "Russian Twitter Support for Trump Began Right After He Started Campaign", "Russia Was Helping Trump Just Days After He Entered the 2016 Primary", "Houston Confederate rally 'earliest evidence' of Russian interference, says Mueller report", "Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election", "Trump Campaign Staffers Pushed Russian Propaganda Days Before the Election", "A Timeline Showing the Full Scale of Russia's Unprecedented Interference in the 2016 Election, and Its Aftermath", "Here's Everything The Mueller Report Says About How Russian Trolls Used Social Media", "All the times Trump campaign figures shared false information sponsored by Russia that were included in the Mueller report", "We hung out a huge banner right on the Arlington Memorial Bridge. [40], According to a 2018 Kommersant article, Yaroslov Ignatovsky (Russian: ; born 1983, Leningrad) heads Politgen (Russian: "") and is a political strategist that has coordinated the trolls' efforts for Prigozhin. She is alleged to have been working with the IRA. Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. for providing support to the Russian Defense Ministry as it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, is alleged to be the man who funded the troll factory. Date 17 April 2018 Source Voice of America https://www.voanews.com/a/inside-the-internet-research-agency-a-mole-among-trolls/4352107.html Author : 202-622-4855. hide caption. Many people have accused Russian television of ramping up propaganda over the past 18 months in its coverage of Ukraine, so much so that the EU even put Dmitry Kiselev, an opinionated television host and director of a major news agency, on its sanctions list. The rally was held in front of the Chicago Police Department's Homan Square facility. Again, a blurry and poorly filmed video is broadcast to support the rumor. You start really believing in it. The IRA's "Matt Skiber" persona contacts another Trump campaign official on Facebook. As he spoke decent English, Marat was sent for a test in the English language department, where he was given the task of writing a one-page text in English about his political views. One features thousands of pasteable images, mainly of European leaders in humiliating photoshopped incidents or with captions pointing out their weakness and stupidity, or showing Putin making hilarious wisecracks and winning the day. The factory worked every single second," Savchuk says. [10][11][12], Information of the work being conducted at the Agency comes in part from interviews with former employees. + Leaflet | Map data OpenStreetMap contributors How to find a Postal Code Each administrative division maintains its own postal code for mail delivery purposes. Others at the factory would write negative posts about American politicians, the war in Ukraine and America's NATO allies. The researchers highlighted the role of the Russian Internet Research Agency in attempts to undermine democracy in the US and exacerbate existing political divisions. In the early days of her investigation into how fake social media accounts and trolls were affecting society, she was looking for a way in. [needs update][citation needed], On 4 April 2016, a rally in Buffalo, New York, protested the death of India Cummings, a black woman who had recently died in police custody. : 202-622-2490; Assistant Director for Licensing, tel. Small rallies were held in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and other cities. [97], "BlackMattersUS", an IRA website, recruited activists to participate in protests on the days immediately following 20 September 2016, police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina. Internet Research Agency Indictment (PDF) Internet Research Agency Indictment (Text) IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC MEDIASINTEZ LLC GLAVSET LLC MIXINFO LLC LLC NOVINFO LLC, CONCORD MANAGEMENT AND CONSULTING LLC, CONCORD CATERING, YEVGENIY VIKTOROVICH PRIGOZHIN, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH Starting in or around 2014, the ORGANIZATION occupied an office at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia. [a] They reported that the organizer of this system is the former anti-Ukrainian combatant Sergiy Zhuk from Donbas. But what went on inside this building in 2015 has attracted a lot of attention in both U.S. and Russian media. Leaked documents have linked the opaque company running the troll factory to structures close to the Kremlin, but there has been no hard evidence. . I am a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Savchuk, a slight woman in her mid-30s, carries around a laptop with a campaign sticker for Alexei Navalny, an opposition leader in Russia who has been barred from running in the presidential election this weekend. Other employees have to manage 10 accounts on Twitter, publishing 50 tweets every day. The 8,300 people who click on the ads are sent to the Agency's "Being Patriotic" Facebook page. [39], An employee interviewed by The Washington Post described the work: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, I immediately felt like a character in the book 1984 by George Orwell a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white. Using a different set of Twitter accounts, the IRA spreads a hoax about a purported police shooting of an unarmed black woman in Atlanta. "Blacktivist" supplied the petitions and poster artwork. Researchers cite e-mail correspondence, in which Concord Management gives instructions to trolls and receives reports on accomplished work. 0
Technical points used by trolls were taken mainly from content disseminated by RT (formerly OFAC: Associate Director for Global Targeting, tel. [79], On 16 April 2016, a rally protesting the death of Freddie Gray attracted large crowds in Baltimore. "It is laughable when Putin says that we do not know about trolls or trolls do not exist," she says, "because when anyone looks through the Kremlin-controlled newspapers or state TV, they can see that the propaganda in that media is the exact same stuff that the trolls are posting.". [34], Novaya Gazeta reported that, according to Alexey Soskovets, head of the office in Olgino, North-Western Service Agency was hiring employees for similar projects in Moscow and other cities in 2013. Business Process Outsourcing BPO; Business Solutions [8][15], Journalists have written that Alexey Soskovets, who had participated in the Russian youth political community, was directly connected to the office in Olgino, and that his company, North-Western Service Agency, won 17 or 18 (according to different sources) contracts for organizing celebrations, forums and sport competitions for authorities of Saint Petersburg and that Soskovets' company was the only participant in half of those bids. Marat shared six of his technical task sheets from his time in the office with the Guardian. - , . [5] The Internet Research Agency gained more attention by June 2015, when one of its offices was reported as having data from fake accounts used for biased Internet trolling. 2-N ofis 2, ul. The extent to which the agency has tried to influence public opinion using social media became better known after a June 2014 BuzzFeed News article greatly expanded on government documents published by hackers earlier that year. It was not good enough to pass. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Each of them has a news line, some information about it, and a conclusion that the commenters should reach. Internet activist Lyudmila Savchuk spent two months working in a "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, Russia. A possibly related organization, FAN or Federal News Agency, was located in the building. : 202-622-2480; Assistant Director for Regulatory Affairs, tel. The entries for the Maidan revolution in Kiev explain that all the protesters were fed special tea laced with drugs, which is what caused the revolution. 9-N, ofis 238, ul. Like the 4 April rally, the event was heavily promoted by IRA's "Blacktivist" Facebook account, including attempted outreach to local activists. A Russian Troll Sent It", "How Russia's Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election", "Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency's impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017", "Russia Steps up Propaganda Push with Online 'Kremlin Trolls', https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_Research_Agency&oldid=1140344111, The IRA uses Twitter to spread a hoax about an. , : , ", "Putin's 'chef,' the man behind the troll factory", "When it comes to hacking societies, Russia remains the master at sowing discord and disinformation online", "Confessions of a pro-Kremlin troll | EU vs Disinformation", "A former Russian troll speaks: 'It was like being in Orwell's world', : , "Video: My life as a pro-Putin propagandist in Russia's secret 'troll factory', "Video of 'US soldier shooting Qur'an' is a fake made in Russia", "Behind the Dutch Terror Threat Video: The St. Petersburg 'Troll Factory' Connection", "Emails Link Kremlin Troll Farm to Bizarre New York Photography Exhibit", "Wynajci Rosjanie cyber-bombarduj polski internet? Nov. Posted by Category: vegetable or salad item crossword clue; where to find mites in grounded . Just after 9pm each day, a long line of workers files out of 55 Savushkina Street, a modern four-storey office complex with a small sign outside that reads Business centre. The IRA used its Blacktivist Facebook account to reach out, to no avail, to activist and academic Barbara Williams Emerson, the daughter of Hosea Williams, to help promote the protests. [11][8][12] The political scientist Thomas Rid has said that the IRA was the least effective of all Russia's interference campaigns in the 2016 U.S. election, despite its outsized press coverage, and that it made no measurable impact on American voters. A blogger's quota is ten posts per shift, each post at least 750 characters. [33], Based on the documents published by Anonymous International, Concord Management and Consulting was linked to the funding of several media outlets in Ukraine and Russia, including Kharkiv News Agency,[12] News of Neva, Newspaper About Newspapers, Business Dialog, and Journalist Truth. It is unclear whether the St Petersburg troll hub is the only one or whether there are many others, but what does seem clear is that the enterprise has grown enormously since it was discovered two years ago. Savchuk is a supporter of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The New York Times article describes various experiences reported by former employees of the Internet Research Agency at the Savushkina Street location. The "Heart of Texas" Facebook group organized the rallies around the theme of Texas seceding from the United States if Hillary Clinton is elected. [8][12], In MayJune 2014, Internet trolls invaded news media sites and massively posted pro-Russian comments in broken English. The Guardian spoke to two former employees of the troll enterprise, one of whom was in a department running fake blogs on the social network LiveJournal, and one who was part of a team that spammed municipal chat forums around Russia with pro-Kremlin posts. Subsequently, there were news reports of individuals receiving monetary compensation for performing these tasks. Maria Bovda was the previous head of the American Department. It was obvious that the decisions were coming from somewhere, said Marat. She says she ignored the trolls and hoped that her reporting spoke for itself. [77] According to The New York Times,[77]. It is unclear whether anyone attended this protest or instead attended the "March for Truth" affiliated protest held on the same day. But if you look a little closer, a few details stick out. Vitaly Bespalov, a 27-year-old freelance journalist with long blond hair and a tattoo of Russian opposition politician Ksenia Sobchak on one arm, came to St.Petersburg in 2014 to try to find work. IRA groups buy ads for the "Florida Goes Trump" rallies. The group contacted the Texas Nationalist Movement, a secessionist organization, to help with organizing efforts, but they declined to help. For instance, the building is covered in windows, but each one is blocked by heavy drapes. About AZIMUT Hotels. Restaurants near Yunost, St. Petersburg on Tripadvisor: Find traveler reviews and candid photos of dining near Yunost in St. Petersburg, Russia. [87], "LGBT United" organized a candlelight vigil on 25 June 2016, for the Pulse nightclub shooting victims in Orlando, Florida. The agency was first mentioned in 2016, when a Russian journalist Andrey Zakharov published his investigation into Prigozhins "troll factory". [19][30], Employees at the Olgino office earned 25,000 Russian rubles per month; those at the Savushkina Street office earned approximately 40,000 Russian rubles. Is a New Russian Meddling Tactic Hiding in Plain Sight? [48], In the beginning of 2016, Ukraine's state-owned news agency Ukrinform claimed to expose a system of bots in social networks, which called for violence against the Ukrainian government and for starting "The Third Maidan". Of these, 30 pages specifically targeted African-Americans, attracting a total of 1.2 million followers. "[99], A large rally was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 22 October 2016, protesting the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. So I was ready for this.". She sips a latte in a cafe outside St. Petersburg after dropping her kids off at day care for the afternoon. The company was established on March 26, 2010. [9] Workplaces for troll-employees were placed in basement rooms. 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