The Kremlin's Trolls Go West
By Ilya KlishinMay. 21 2014
According to the analysis, many of the pro-Putin messages have been posted by Russian expats in Germany, India and Thailand. Hackers from Anonymous, a vigilante activist network, hacked the e-mail account of one "trolling" group that is charged with running the campaign in the U.S. and gave me some of the information they discovered.
The organizers of this campaign likely studied the demographic structure of the main social networks in the U.S., the online behavior of its citizens, relevant hashtags on Twitter and groups supporting U.S. President Barack Obama.
Russia's "Internet trolling squad" made detailed studies of the such sites as The Blaze, The Huffington Post and Fox News, including their audiences, owners, official and actual editorial policies as well as their attitudes toward Russia and Obama. Screenshots show comments posted in English with serious grammatical errors.
A great number of false accounts will be created for the strategically important Huffington Post website. Hacked letters showed that "up to 100 accounts will be registered and promoted" to achieve the optimum result from the site's complex system that gives "top billing" to comments posted by users with the highest number of subscribers.
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