Ukraine’s young new president Volodymyr Zelensky — hailed in the West as an ambitious reformer — is an enthusiastic social media user, deploying his popular Instagram and Facebook accounts to reach large audiences during his recent election campaign.

He hasn’t stopped there. Months since his landslide election in April, Zelensky’s Facebook posts are still receiving tens of thousands of reactions and thousands of comments. His chief of staff even said that the president’s team “doesn’t need journalists” to communicate with citizens, because they can do so directly.

The word “bot” is sometimes used to refer to inauthentic social media users, though the term should technically refer to automated accounts. In this story, the phrases “hired account,” “fake account,” or “troll” are used to refer to inauthentic accounts, since there are real human beings behind them.

But according to a recent investigation by VoxUkraine, Zelensky’s Facebook page had the most active fake users of any Ukrainian politician — 27,926 inauthentic accounts. They posted almost a quarter of all comments during the period analyzed. Similar ratios were seen for other top politicians.

Interference in U.S. and European elections by Russian internet trolls has become a hot topic in recent years, particularly since the discovery of the Internet Research Agency, a well-resourced “troll farm” in St. Petersburg. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that domestic troll farms — hired by local politicians and campaign managers, not foreigners — could be just as influential.

To understand how these powerful mechanisms function, OCCRP member center Slidstvo.Info sent a journalist undercover to work at a Ukrainian troll farm in advance of this summer’s parliamentary elections.

During a month and a half on the job, the Slidstvo.Info reporter discovered that these social media techniques were used even on behalf of progressive politicians who publicly spoke out against such tactics. For example, the troll farm supported Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, a popular musician whose reformist Holos party now holds 20 seats in parliament.

Reporters were unable to discover who paid the troll factory for its activities, so it’s unclear whether it had been directly hired by any specific campaign. Vakarchuk denied any knowledge of trolling being used on his behalf. Another well-known politician who was promoted by the troll farm, presidential candidate Anatoliy Hrytsenko, refused to comment.

As a company, the troll farm itself is no less misleading than the content it produced. The operation used at least two names — Doping and PRagmatico — to present itself to clients and to its own employees, though neither is registered as a business. Its advertisements for trolling jobs are disguised as benign “content” positions. And the company pays its employees under the table in cash, which is illegal in Ukraine.

Just days before the publication of this story, there was a new development. In a news post on Sept. 16, Facebook announced the closure of dozens of Ukrainian accounts, pages, and groups for “inauthentic behavior.” The activity, it said, was linked to PRagmatico, which it described as a “PR firm.” At the same time, the fake accounts identified by Slidstvo.Info also disappeared.

Though Facebook described its actions as the result of an internal investigation, the timing suggests that the account closures may be linked to the reporting of this story.

A Facebook spokesperson reached for comment reiterated that the social media company is “always working to identify bad actors who are abusing the platform.”

A bot for 365 dollars

One of Zelensky’s first steps as president was to call for snap parliamentary elections. The stakes were high: A good result for his party, Sluha Narodu (Servant of the People), would give him a vast mandate.

Zelensky’s move presaged a hot summer for troll farms — so Slidstvo.Info got to work.

The first step was getting hired. Reporter Vasyl Bidun applied for the position on a job recruitment website, where it was disguised as a “copywriter” job.

Bidun was invited for an interview at an office in a typical residential flat located on the third floor of an apartment building in downtown Kyiv. There were no signs advertising the company, which called itself Doping.

The man who led the interview did not ask about Bidun’s experience or education. Instead, he invited the journalist to start right away, with a monthly salary of 9,000 hryvnia (US$365) — approximately equivalent to a cashier’s salary at a Ukrainian McDonald’s. He also said that the company was still in the process of being registered, so salaries would be paid in cash. (In the end, neither Doping nor the other name the operation used, PRagmatico, ever registered as legal entities.)

The office was tidy and modestly furnished. Its only distinctive feature was a large, open balcony where the young employees took frequent smoke breaks.

The troll farm worked almost around the clock, employing three shifts of workers who toiled between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. Bidun chose the morning shift. On his first day, a supervisor briefly explained the job: He was to spend his time posting comments under different identities on Facebook, Ukraine’s most politically active social media platform. To do so, he was given access to dozens of fake accounts created by other troll farm employees.

The troll farm appeared to be almost entirely devoted to Facebook. Employees were not directed to make comments on Twitter, Instagram, or any other major social media platform — with the exception of YouTube, where a small percentage of comments were made.

Bidun’s tasks for the day were assigned through several group channels on the Telegram messaging service — each one devoted to a different client. There were usually several assignments per day, and supervisors provided the key themes on which the comments were supposed to be based.

During a 7-hour shift, Bidun was expected to produce around 300 comments, posted either on the politicians’ personal Facebook pages or under posts of articles published by popular Ukrainian news sites. He was advised to write quickly to meet the quota, without worrying too much about grammar. “People in the real world aren’t that educated,” a manager explained. “So if you write with grammar mistakes, this may even be a positive thing.”

Supervisors’ orders were executed without question. In addition to Bidun, about 10 others worked during his shift. His colleagues were mostly young men and women who seemed to care little about politics — the job required no ideological convictions. And there was little time for talking: The daily quotas needed to be met.