Russian troll factory sued

[Thanas]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/j ... imir-putin

The secretive Russian agency that hires people to write pro-Kremlin propaganda on the web stepped into the public spotlight for the first time on Tuesday as a former employee took it to court.

The Agency for Internet Studies, which runs what has been called a “troll factory” from a nondescript St Petersburg address, is being sued by employee Lyudmila Savchuk for alleged underpayment and various labour violations.

Savchuk says she was one of many paid to write comments online supporting the policies of Vladimir Putin.

The agency is now seeking to avoid public scrutiny by offering to compensate her. Yekaterina Nazarova, defending, told the Petrogradsky district court judge the agency was ready to settle with Savchuk, who had asked for a symbolic sum of 10,000 roubles (£118).

Nazarova offered to wire the sum to Savchuk’s account, then quickly left the court without speaking to the press.

Savchuk said: “I am very pleased, they pretended they don’t exist at all and now they have come out of the shadows for the first time – we saw their representative. But I will feel that I won only after the troll factory closes completely.”

Savchuk says she worked at the agency for two months, but quit in March and has since vowed to expose it.

The agency, located in the north of Russia’s second-largest city, is blamed by observers for doing the Kremlin’s dirty work on the internet, polluting news websites with inflammatory comments and manipulating social networks into blocking anti-Putin bloggers.

The phenomenon has become particularly intense during the conflict in Ukraine, with some reports claiming the agency has expanded into foreign languages, pictures and videos, and is even running its own news sites.

Savchuk’s lawyer. Ivan Pavlov, said the result of Tuesday’s hearing – the second this month after the agency skipped the first – was “unexpected” and he suspected the defendant of trying to escape the public eye.

“I suppose the defendant considers it a lesser evil to recognise the lawsuit and pay compensation,” he said.

Pavlov added that the next step would be a meeting with Savchuk at the agency’s headquarters in July, which he called “another chance to make their activities transparent”.

[K. A. Pital]

We call them Kremlebots. Writing comments 85 roubles per one. Sad, sad story.

[Thanas]

We call them Putinbots. I wonder how much credence there is to the claims that the FSB is sponsoring foreigners to do the same.

[madd0ct0r]

Depends what the rate is. There will also be informal. Methods, such as emailing everyone in your government department a link and telling them to comment

[K. A. Pital]

We call them Putinbots. I wonder how much credence there is to the claims that the FSB is sponsoring foreigners to do the same.

You are joking. These guys don't have the budget for that. Or you mean Russia Today?

[Ralin]

We call them Kremlebots. Writing comments 85 roubles per one. Sad, sad story.

Seriously? There's a Russian version of the Wumao Dang?

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, except unlike the 五毛党 they have a much harder time on the net. They never bother writing long articles and their comments are usually bordering on illiteracy. The Russian Kremlinbots sometimes actually are bots, i.e. scripts designed by the E division (counterextremist unit of the FSB) to leave comments that contain a generally negative or generally positive reaction to blog posts and certain news articles.

They also have a keyword search machine that sends bots to certain posts which contain sensitive words. E.g. putin railways yakunin bribes palace or miller gazprom glass penis would cause bots to flock to the page almost immediately.