Sky News: Ukraine war: Britain accuses ‘sick Russian troll factory’ of ‘plaguing social media with Kremlin propaganda’. “An organisation based in St Petersburg called Cyber Front Z is said to pay locals about £500 a month to target senior politicians and media outlets on social media platforms and in comment sections.”
Rolling Stone: That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It. “We’ve spent the past two years studying online disinformation and building a deep understanding of Russia’s strategy, tactics, and impact. Working from data Twitter has publicly released, we’ve read Russian tweets until our eyes bled. Looking at a range of behavioral signals, we have begun to develop procedures to identify disinformation campaigns and have worked with Twitter to suspend accounts. In the process we’ve shared what we’ve learned with people making a difference, both in and out of government.”
Ars Technica: Rent-a-troll: Researchers pit disinformation farmers against each other. “The same sorts of organizations that once made their money performing ‘black SEO’—using fraudulent means to raise paying customers’ search engine ranks, often for illicit reasons—are now diving into a whole new sort of online manipulation. Researchers at security threat tracking company Recorded Future have found companies selling disinformation campaign capabilities similar to the ones used by Russian ‘troll factories’ during the 2016 US presidential campaign and other state-sponsored information operations.”
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