RUSSIA-CRISIS/INTERNET Former pro-Kremlin blogger uncovers life of Internet troll factory

Record ID: 149091

  • Title: RUSSIA-CRISIS/INTERNET Former pro-Kremlin blogger uncovers life of Internet troll factory
  • Date: 30th June 2015
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF FACEBOOK PAGE VARIOUS OF TWITTER PAGE
  • Embargoed: 15th July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA8NG7W6CXI34Z58BQFX1UQ071Q
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A gray building in a back street of Russia's second largest city of St. Petersburg may look like any other ordinary office building. But Lyudmila Savchuk who claims to be an activist promoting freedom of information says the premises are occupied by an army of bloggers polluting social networks with inflammatory comments and promoting Kremlin points of view on media forums.
    Savchuk calls it a troll factory and says she had spent two months there as an employee documenting the process of creating a wave of pro-Kremlin propaganda.
    "All these four floors of this factory are full of trolls," she says pointing to the office building on Savushkina street on the outskirts of the city.
    "Trolls are people who fill the whole Internet, including foreign Internet not only Russian one, with their comments, posts, pictures and videos," she adds.
    Savchuk says she was hired to blog for Agency of Internet Studies in December 2014 and spent two months writing posts and comments pretending to be a housewife with no particular political views.
    She says she would publish recipes and movie reviews occasionally peppering her posts with anti-U.S. or anti-Ukrainian statements.
    According to Savchuk, she and her fellow colleagues worked under tight control and signed a non-disclosure agreement. She also says the comments were made not only in Russian but in several other languages across different platforms.
    "They work everywhere. Across social networks - Facebook, Vkontakte, Twitter - all big networks. They also leave comments on media websites, including foreign ones in different languages - English, any other languages - German, Ukrainian," she says.
    "There are a lot of those people. I have seen at least several hundreds when I was there. There are several hundreds of people in the building at the same time. When a day shift leaves, a night shift comes. They work shifts around the clock. There may be over one thousand people," Savchuk adds.
    She also says trolls get hefty payment of about 1,000 U.S. dollars per month which is more than an average salary in St. Petersburg.
    "They get work specifications. There are several main topics including Ukraine, USA and the EU - in general all main topics which are on the agenda - and also Russian opposition. Main opposition figures are regularly insulted and discredited on the Internet," she adds.
    Savchuk who used to work for a local newspaper before starting the job of paid blogger is not the first to speak about the so-called "Kremlin troll factory" publicly. The dirty kitchen of the secret agency was described before by several Russian and foreign journalists.
    But Savchuk seems to be the first one who managed to bring the troll factory into spotlight after she filed a lawsuit against the company which hired her for alleged underpayment and labour violations.
    After uncovering the troll factory, Savchuk became a widely known person being invited to different forums and seminars, even the ones supported by the authorities.
    She attended one which was a government-sponsored youth camp where she was expected to show young people an example of a civil activist.
    Yevgenia Albats, editor of independent The New Times magazine, said the work of St. Petersburg activists who uncovered the Internet propaganda machine deserves praise.
    "It is very nice that our colleagues in St. Petersburg managed to uncover this, that people do know that the government is doing this type of things, that the government is spamming the Internet and provide funds for lies and diversions and etcetera to be on the Internet," she told Reuters.
    According to Albats, The New Times magazine used to be a target of pro-Kremlin trolls.
    "We experienced these attacks several times and they managed to put down our service several times. You know, yes, it is part of life," she said.
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