Putin's Social Media Army Unmasked ~ (ATT Oleg)

[jonathan]

How Putin Secretly Conquered Russia's Social Media
Over the Past 3 Years
Posted 30 January 2015 11:30 GMT


What’s happened in Russia would be like Fox News taking over the airways
in the US, booting MSNBC from cable TV, and reducing liberals to
broadcasting online from a small private apartment in Brooklyn.

This farce is the same with elections (where competition is fake), the
courts (where justice is a lie), and mass demonstrations (where
participation is obligatory).

For many years, the Internet was Russia’s last beacon of honesty. That’s
no longer the case. Over the past three years, a social-media army
fielded by the Kremlin has stormed what was once a stronghold for people
who seek a “Russia without Putin.”

Here’s how it happened.

Before the 2011 parliamentary elections, the phoniness of which sent as
many as 100,000 thousand protesters into the streets, the Kremlin
couldn’t care less about political significance of social media and the
Internet. The government’s puppet master of domestic politics, a man
named Vladislav Surkov, was content merely to funnel cash to top
bloggers, paying them to publish planted stories on LiveJournal from
time to time.

When the winter protests began in December 2011, the new social media,
namely Twitter and Facebook, were under the complete control of Putin’s
political opponents, who knew it and unsurprisingly built vast networks
to organize demonstrations against the fraudulent elections.

After two mass rallies in Moscow against the parliamentary election
results, Surkov lost his job in the Kremlin, following his obvious
failure to contain the Internet. His replacement is Vyacheslav Volodin,
a less cerebral man known for his rough-and-ready management style.

Volodin is said to have only a weak grasp of the digital world, but
others with a better understanding are believed to have his ear. In
2012, Volodin promoted some of these Internet-savvy advisers to a
special unit inside the Kremlin’s Department of Internal Policy. He put
Timur Prokopenko, a young man in his thirties with experience working
for pro-Kremlin youth movements, in charge of the outfit.

At first, the Kremlin’s social media team simply copied whatever the
Russian opposition did online. If Putin’s rivals criticized him with
hashtags, Putin’s people would respond instantly with hashtags targeting
Alexey Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader. When this
method of retaliation proved too obvious and primitive, the Kremlin’s
social media team moved on to other tactics.

They tried spamming social media with “bot” accounts, though networks
like Twitter were quick to recognize it and intervene. The Kremlin’s
team then turned to its activists in the regions, outside Moscow and St.
Petersburg, whom they’d largely overlooked in the past. Now they
recruited these people to serve as living, breathing bots. Imagine it:
young men and women across Russia enlisted to do nothing but promote
trending topics on Twitter and troll the liberal media on Facebook.

My contact at Twitter has indicated to me that they’re powerless to
intervene against such accounts, as it is indeed real people running
them. The workaround to a bot army, the Kremlin has discovered, is a
troll army.

Of course, even tapping the regions’ stores of pro-Kremlin activists
wasn’t enough. What started with dozens of re-purposed boy scouts grew
to hundreds, but there it hit a ceiling. When that happened, Putin’s
team approached Russian advertisers. According to my sources, there are
currently 10 different advertising agencies working for the Kremlin.
These contracts are secret, and the firms are careful to maintain other,
non-political clients.

The agencies compete fiercely with one another for contract extensions
and bigger deals, making Russia’s online propaganda industry quite
lucrative and surprisingly effective. It’s like Adam Smith’s “invisible
hand,” except the opposite.

Combined, these efforts field a troll army of thousands. In some areas,
like on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, the enterprise is so big that
there are whole office buildings for these people.

It seems like a joke, but thousands of hired bloggers “go to work” every
day, writing online about Vladimir Putin’s greatness and the decay of
the West. They’re on Facebook, Twitter, news sites, and anywhere else
the Kremlin feels threatened and outnumbered. Fresh instructions arrive
every day in emails, specifying what to say and where to post it, all
with the aim of bolstering Putin’s presidency amidst war and economic
crisis.

Sadly, it’s working. People have trouble believing the scope of the
Kremlin’s Internet invasion, thinking it incredulous that the government
could be capable of such sophisticated, targeted manipulation. And yet
that is exactly what Putin’s social media team has achieved.

Of course, conquering the Internet has been a lot easier, after the
dramatic reduction of independent media outlets in Russia—a phenomenon
known as the “f#cking chain.” The Kremlin’s social media takeover has at
last reached the people who don’t watch state-run television. The circle
is now complete.

The system works like this: trolls flood a comments section with
scripted complaints against the West or the liberal opposition, and the
state-run media then reports these comments as “bloggers’ outrage,”
fueling further conversations online, building what becomes an
organic/artificial mix. In this way, Putin’s team is able to impose its
agenda even on the Russian Internet’s liberal ghetto.

Based on the success of this model in Russia, the Kremlin is now
investing heavily in “exporting” it to social media popular in Europe
and the United States.

If you live in the West, beware.


http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/01/30/how-putin-secretly-conquered-russias-social-media-over-the-past-3-years/

[george152]

On 31/01/2015 6:26 a.m., jonathan wrote:
>

> The system works like this: trolls flood a comments section with
> scripted complaints against the West or the liberal opposition, and the
> state-run media then reports these comments as “bloggers’ outrage,”
> fueling further conversations online, building what becomes an
> organic/artificial mix. In this way, Putin’s team is able to impose its
> agenda even on the Russian Internet’s liberal ghetto.
>
> Based on the success of this model in Russia, the Kremlin is now
> investing heavily in “exporting” it to social media popular in Europe
> and the United States.
>
> If you live in the West, beware.

We have Oleg

[Andrew Swallow]

I have seen left wing organisation(s) doing similar things on English
language Twitter for months. I did not think that they had been
controlled by Moscow, just copying the tactic but I will not rule it out.

They operate on a 3 day cycle. (Possibly orders from top, obey, report
back?) It is easy to spot, they all say the same thing - many use
identical words.

Andrew Swallow

[David E. Powell]

I would not be surprised if they use Boiler Rooms. It has been confirmed the Obama campaign used similar techniques in the 2008 campaign, one thing that surprised the Clinton campaign early on in the primary.

The Pro-Russia folks are hitting Internet comment boards a lot, especially in European newspapers. This includes left wing ones (Among many others) though the irony is that the Western European left wing and Putin's point of view differ on quite a few things. They are pretty easy to pick out as they all basically quote RT conspiracy theories, again, using the same phrases like it was a cut and paste.

One fascinating thing right now is that the old "fellow travelers" play isn't there as much for Mr. Putin as it was for the USSR. Putin's social views differ heavily with those of the majority of European leftists, and his expansionism triggers reflexive caution in the rightists there. Not many folks they can appeal to with common ideological goals in Moscow these days. Though that may change some if Russia makes some inroads with Greece in their latest offer of financial aid there.

> Andrew Swallow

[Andrew Swallow]

I suspect that Russia does not has the foreign currency to support
Greece for long.

[george152]

On 31/01/2015 4:31 p.m., Andrew Swallow wrote:

> I suspect that Russia does not has the foreign currency to support
> Greece for long.

Greece is a bottomless pit capable of soaking up every Euro printed.
Or the Russian equivalent.
Is Putin going in to bat for the newly elected communist PM ?

[jonathan]

And I bet Putin could've succeeded in splitting
the EU over extending the sanctions if he didn't
go on the offensive in Ukraine. If he'd just
let it die down for another 2 months.

Where have I heard that refrain before, if
...'he'd just waited a little longer'?

Ya know I just watched that great old war movie
'Battle of Britain', again, and I can't help seeing
the comparison here to the bombing of Berlin which
trolled Hitler into bombing London instead of the
airfields. And what a strategic mistake that turned
out to be.

In this case during the UKR counter-attack to
retake the Donetsk airport, parts of Donetsk
were shelled and that led to a mass exodus of
civilians from Donetsk.

In response the rebels fired off a Grad volley
into downtown Mariupol, and then went
on the offensive, leading to the sanctions
being extended.

Thousands flee Donetsk (1:45)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjO88bdF5Sw

Dashcam of Grad Strikes on Marupol
(0:23)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4lbZEXX7E


What a great movie scene!

Hitler: "The hour will come when one of us
will crack"

Hitler Speech responds to Churchill Bombing
Civilians (2:56)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJcjXC3YRT8


What pisses me off about Europe is we're supposed
to learn the mistakes of history so we /don't/
repeat them, not...how...to repeat them.

And that extra six months of sanctions means a
full blown banking crisis should take place.
This is a war of attrition now, will Ukraine's
economy outlast Russia's economy?

Can Putin afford all the war costs plus sacrificing
his own economy, longer than the west can...print
money to keep bailing out Ukraine?

The west can print money forever~



Wall Street Journal
5:03 pm ET
Jan 30, 2015 THINK TANK

Will Putin Bail Out Greece?

Last week’s victory by the Greek leftist party Syriza has Europe
worrying that a new government in Athens may help Vladimir Putin
dismantle the sanctions imposed on him for trying to break up Ukraine.
Because the renewal of these sanctions requires the unanimous support of
EU members, all Mr. Putin has to do is persuade the Greeks to object.
What will he have to pay for this? A few billion here to recapitalize
Greek banks, maybe a few billion there on new energy deals—and soon
enough, the theory goes, Mr. Putin is out from under. Plausible?

Much analysis of the issue has focused on Greek good sense. Sure,
Greece has cultural affinities for Russia, and yes, the new government
admires Mr. Putin’s defiance of Western institutions. But Athens has
serious business to do with Brussels in the next few months, and making
Eurocrats mad over an issue like Ukraine may come to seem foolish. The
new Greek foreign minister Nikos Kotzias bolstered this optimistic view
when he met with his EU counterparts on Thursday. “I am not a Russian
puppet,” Mr. Kotzias assured them.


Whatever the Greeks decide, Mr. Putin himself has powerful reasons to
hesitate. Russia has its own economic crisis to ccope with. Remember
what triggered the ruble’s quick crash in December? A decision by the
Central Bank to help Rosneft, the state oil company, meet looming
payment deadlines. To many, that—plus the crashing price of oil—was a
sign that bailouts were ahead, and that political connections would
guide them.

The Russian finance minister has said his country is ready to consider
Greek requests, but if Mr. Putin puts Moscow’s dwindling hard-currency
reserves on the line to help Syriza stand up to the EU, the domestic
pushback is likely to be strong. With Russia’s own banks and companies
in difficult shape, it will be said, Greece should be left to fight its
own battles. Expect a battle royal on this issue.

Strategic cooperation between Moscow and Athens would have its ironies.
A leftist Greek government that hates the fat cats of the EU would be
selling itself to a regime run by the fattest, most corrupt cats of all.
Mr. Putin, who hates—and fears—popular spontaneity, would be embracing
Europe’s angriest tire-burners. Irony, I admit, may not stop him. I’m
pretty confident that the money will.

Stephen Sestanovich, a professor at Columbia University and senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of
“Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama.” He is on
Twitter: @ssestanovich.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/30/will-putin-bail-out-greece/





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