The Russian employees who worked to influence the 2016 US presidential election at the “troll factory” were required to watch House of Cards to learn tactics to help turn “Americans against their own government,” according to an interview by Russian TV station Rain.

The troll factory, formerly known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), is a Russian company based in the Olgino district of St. Petersburg. On Monday, a man going by the pseudonym Maksim, explained to TV Rain how the troll factory employees were paid by the Kremlin to encourage discord on social media, news websites, discussions boards, and other online communities.

You were given a list of media that you had to monitor and comment on. New York Times, Washington Post – there came up to tens of thousands of comments. It was necessary to look through all this and understand the general trend, what people write about, what they are arguing about. And then get into the dispute yourself to kindle it, try to rock the boat. The most common topics are wearing weapons, gays. When gay, then almost always we needed to deduce religious topics. Americans are very religious, especially those who sit on forums, on news sites and write comments. It was necessary to write that sodomy is a sin. It’s always a couple of dozen likes could bring you. About Russia in general it is impossible. Neither Russia nor Putin could be mentioned. Because the Americans do not talk about it. They, in fact, do not care about Russia and Putin. We did not have the goal of turning the Americans to Russia. We had a goal to set up the Americans against their own government. To cause unrest, cause discontent, lower Obama’s rating.

Apparently, writing “sodomy is a sin” is a good way to get “a couple dozen likes,” which definitely says something about America.

RBC reported that the IRA spent $2.3 million on their US operations, a decent amount of which went to employing 90 full-time trolls. Earlier this year, Facebook admitted that Russian IP addresses purchased ads during the 2016 campaign, and the RBC report confirms that at least $120,000 was spent to publicize the paid activist’s fake rallies.

The best part of the TV Rain interview is definitely the admission that the employees binge-watched House of Cards in English to learn tactics for their fake news war.

At first we were forced to watch the “House of Cards” in English. We had classes in English: we sorted out each other’s comments, what errors, how not to write. There present perfect, and then – past simple, but here we have to put an apostrophe, “but why did you put a comma here, they do not put commas the way we put it.” In fact, we taught each other.

According to CNN, a Russian oligarch and member of Putin’s inner-circle named Yevgeny Prigozhin is at least partly responsible for financing the troll factory.

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