Russian Troll farm sought to undermine US government, energy, climate

The Washington Post reports on the Russian Troll Farm in St Petersburg known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA):

Russian trolls used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inflame U.S. political debate over energy policy and climate change…

The committee’s report found that between 2015 and 2017, more than 9,000 posts and tweets dealt with U.S. energy policy produced by 4,334 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts controlled by the Internet Research Agency.

Twitter told the committee that more than 4 percent of tweets produced by the Russians dealt with energy and climate issues.

Keep your eye on the numbers – 96% of their effort was not about energy and climate, and presumably we’re talking about 400 posts and tweets? Drop in the ocean…

But for those who havent read about the Russian Troll Farm known at the IRA — it’s worth catching up. I found this account from an insider, last October, interesting:

Max says that IRA staff were tasked with monitoring tens of thousands of comments on major U.S. media outlets, in order to grasp the general trends of American Internet users. Once employees got a sense of what Americans naturally discussed in comment forums and on social media, their job was to incite them further and try to “rock the boat.”

When the U.S. presidential race was just starting, the IRA supposedly conducted classes on which of the early candidates were best for Russian interests. Max says the IRA even maintained a “secret department” that sent staff to the United States for certain undisclosed tasks.

Max says the international desk had about 200 employees, each earning 50,000 rubles ($870) a month. Staff would work two days, then have two days off, before repeating the schedule. People worked 12-hour shifts, he says.

But in the last 70 years could anyone name a year when there was no Russian effort to covertly undermine US leaders or institutions via propaganda? Isn’t this business as usual, but via VPN?

The Russians were true trolls. The main agenda was polarisation, inflammation, doubt:

The trolls worked both sides of the fence on many topics. You might think (it’s obvious) that it would suit Russians very well for the West to be fooled into giving up coal and nukes and handicap themselves with sacrificial windmills and solar panels. For sure, but the bigger goal here is to foment division, dissent and distrust. In a high trust society — losing trust in our government, our election process, and our markets eats away at the things that make us great, like acid. And it becomes self fulfilling. Once enough people assume the other players are acting in an untrustworthy manner (even if they are not) the good people tend to adopt the self-serving behaviours they imagine others are adopting.

Newsweek:

In January 2017, a report from the U.S. intelligence community said Russian president Vladimir Putin had “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.” The goals, the analysis revealed, were to undermine faith in U.S. democracy and harm the “potential presidency” of rival candidate Clinton.

Remembering that in Jan 2016, almost no one in the US outside of Donald Trump and Scott Adams thought Trump was going to win. So being anti-Hillary was not to be pro-Trump, it was anti-the-next-likely-POTUS. The real goal it appears, was to undermine US confidence in itself, and undermine the ability of the next leader to get things done.

Big-government fans at Grist don’t know what to make of it.

“Russian trolls shared some truly terrible climate change memes”

Terrible, I tell you! Or not…

This wouldn’t have been my first choice for “terror”. But it might win a primary school art contest.

This one is much better:

Grist author, Kate Yoder, totally misses the point: “And here are two anti-environmental memes that highlight the apparent beauty of tar-sands oil.”

Or maybe they highlight the ugliness of electric cars and (above) environmental activists?

But seriously, 9,000 likes and 250 comments? It’s a great tweet, but in a great nation, how much damage can it do? (Not as much as George Soros.)

The news that there are fake “activists” on both sides of the debate is far more threatening to the believers. Skeptics know why we are skeptics. Believers are following a group, so it’s much more unnerving to find that some members of the herd are there to guide the pack.

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