Internet Research Agency

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See also: Web brigades (also known as troll army or troll factory)

"Trolls from Olgino" gained usage after fake accounts for Internet trolling were traced back to Saint Petersburg, Russia.[1]

The Internet Research Agency (IRA) (Агентство интернет-исследований), also known as Glavset[2] and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino or kremlebots, is a Russian company, based in Saint Petersburg, that engages in online influence operations on behalf of Russian business interests. The agency has employed fake accounts registered on major social networks, discussion boards, online newspaper sites, and video hosting services in order to promote the Kremlin's interests in domestic and foreign policy including Ukraine and the Middle East as well as attempting to influence the 2016 United States presidential election. More than 1,000 paid bloggers and commenters reportedly worked in a single building of the agency in 2015.

The extent to which these Russians tried to influence public opinion using social media became widely known after a June 2014 BuzzFeed article greatly expanded on government documents published by hackers earlier that year.[3] The IRA gained worldwide media attention by June 2015, when one of its offices was reported as having data from fake accounts used for biased Internet trolling. Subsequently, there were news reports of individuals receiving monetary compensation for performing these tasks.[1]

The United States Department of Justice on 16 February 2018 indicted thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian entities, including the Internet Research Agency, of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere "with U.S. elections and political processes", according to the Justice Department.[4]
Contents

1 Origin
2 Organizers
2.1 Strategic
2.2 Tactical
3 Offices
3.1 In Saint Petersburg
3.2 In other cities
4 Work organization
5 Trolling themes
6 Organized anti-Ukrainian campaign
7 Reactions
8 Assessments
9 Additional activities of organizers
10 Lawsuit
11 Indictments
12 Notes
13 See also
14 References
15 Further reading
16 External links

Origin
See also: Web brigades

The group's office in Olgino, a historical district of Saint Petersburg, was exposed by Novaya Gazeta newspaper in 2013.[5] "Trolls from Olgino" and "Olgino's trolls" have become general terms denoting trolls who spread pro-Russian propaganda, not only necessarily those based at the office in Olgino.[6][7]

Organizers
Strategic

Russian newspaper Vedomosti links the approved-by-Russian-authorities strategy of public consciousness manipulation through new media to Vyacheslav Volodin, first deputy of the Vladimir Putin Presidential Administration of Russia.[8][9]

Tactical

External video Why are Russian trolls spreading online hoaxes in the U.S.?, PBS News Hour (PBS is a publicly funded American broadcaster), 8 June 2015 [10]

RUSSIAN INVASION: Bots and trolls take over the web! RT (RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government), 3 June 2014[11]

According to journalists’ investigations, the office in Olgino was named as Internet Research Agency Ltd. (Russian: ООО «Агентство интернет-исследований»).[5][12] The company was founded in the summer of 2013.[8]

Journalists also point out that Alexey Soskovets, who had participated in the Russian youth political community, was directly connected to the office in Olgino. His company, North-Western Service Agency, won 17 or 18 (according to different sources) contracts for organizing celebrations, forums and sport competitions for authorities of Saint Petersburg. The agency was the only participant in half of those bids. In the summer of 2013 the agency won a tender for providing freight services for participants of Seliger camp.[5][13]

In 2014, according to Russian media, Internet Research Ltd. (Russian: ООО «Интернет исследования»), founded in March 2014, joined the agency's activity. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta claims this company to be a successor of Internet Research Agency Ltd.[14] Internet Research Ltd. is considered to be linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the holding company Concord Management and Consulting. The "Trolls of Olgino" from Saint Petersburg are considered to be his project. As of October 2014, the company belonged to Mikhail Bystrov, who had been the head of the police station at Moscow district of Saint Petersburg.[15]

Russian media point out that according to documents, published by hackers from Anonymous International, Concord is directly involved with trolling administration through the agency. Researchers cite e-mail correspondence, in which Concord gives instructions to trolls and receives reports on accomplished work.[7] According to journalists' information, Concord organized banquets in the Kremlin and also cooperated with Voentorg and the Russian Ministry of Defence.[16]

Despite links to Alexei Soskovets, Nadejda Orlova, deputy head of the Committee for Youth Policy in Saint Petersburg, disputed a connection between her institution and the trolling offices.[5]

Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro, who extensively reported on the pro-Russian trolling activities in Finland, was in response targeted by an organized campaign of hate, disinformation and harassment.[17][18][19]

Offices

In Saint Petersburg
In Olgino

59°59′42.7″N 30°07′49.7″E

As reported by Novaya Gazeta, in the end of August 2013, the following message appeared in social networks: "Internet operators wanted! Job at chic office in Olgino!!! (st. Staraya Derevnia), salary 25960 per month (USD$780 as of 2013). Task: posting comments at profile sites in the Internet, writing thematic posts, blogs, social networks. Reports via screenshots. Individual schedule <...> Payment every week, 1180 per shift (from 8.00 to 16.00, from 10.30 to 18.30, from 14.00 to 22.00). PAYMENTS EVERY WEEK AND FREE MEALS!!! Official job placement or according to contract (at will). Tuition possible."[5]

As reported by media and former employees, the office in Olgino had existed and had been functioning since September 2013. It was situated in a white cottage,[6] 15 minutes by an underground railway from Staraya Derevnia station, opposite Olgino railway station.[5] Workplaces for troll-employees were placed in basement rooms.[13][16][20]

Savushkina Street

59°59′03.5″N 30°16′19.1″E

According to Russian online newspaper DP.ru, several months before October 2014 the office moved from Olgino to a four-story building at 55 Savushkina Street.[15][16][21] As reported by journalists, the building is officially an uncompleted construction and stayed as such as of March 2015.[14]

A New York Times investigative reporter was told that the Internet Research Agency had shortened its name to "Internet Research," and as of June 2015 had been asked to leave the 55 Savushkina Street location "a couple of months ago" because "it was giving the entire building a bad reputation." A possibly related organization, FAN or Federal News Agency, was located in the building. The New York Times article describes various experiences reported by former employees of the Internet Research Agency at the Savushkina Street location. It also describes several disruptive hoaxes in the US and Europe, such as the Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax, that may be attributable to the Internet Research Agency or similar Russian-based organizations.[22]

In other cities

Novaya Gazeta reported that, according to Alexey Soskovets, head of the office in Olgino, North-Western Service Agency was hiring employees for similar projects in Moscow and other cities in 2013.[5]
Work organization

More than 1000 paid bloggers and commenters reportedly worked only in a single building at Savushkina Street in 2015[23]. Many other employees work remotely. According to BuzzFeed, more than 600 people were generally employed in the trolls' office earlier, in June 2014.[3] Each commentator has a daily quota of 100 comments.[5]

Trolls take shifts writing mainly in blogs on LiveJournal and Vkontakte, about subjects along the propaganda lines assigned. Included among the employees are artists who draw political cartoons.[14] They work for 12 hours every other two days. A blogger's quota is ten posts per shift, each post at least 750 characters. A commenter's norm is 126 comments and two posts per account. Each blogger is in charge of three accounts.[15][16][21]

Employees at the Olgino office earned 25,000 Russian rubles per month; those at the Savushkina Street office earned approximately 40,000 Russian rubles.[15][21] In May 2014, Fontanka.ru described schemes for plundering the federal budget, intended to go toward the trolling organization.[7][8] In 2017 another whistleblower said that with bonuses and long working hours the salary can reach 80,000 rubles.[24]

An employee interviewed by The Washington Post described the work:

I immediately felt like a character in the book 1984 by George Orwell — a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white. Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line.[25]

Trolling themes

According to the testimonies of the investigative journalists and former employees of the offices, the main topics for posts included:[5][12][15][21]

Criticism of Alexei Navalny, his sponsors, and Russian opposition in general;[14]
Criticism of Ukraine's and the United States' foreign policies, and of the top politicians of these states;
Praise for Vladimir Putin and the policy of the Russian Federation.
Praise for and defense of Bashar al-Assad.[26]

Journalists have written that themes of trolling were consistent with those of other Russian propaganda outlets in topics and timing. Technical points used by trolls were taken mainly from Russia Today content.[14][21]

A 2015 BBC investigation identified the Olgino factory as the most likely producer of a September 2015 "Saiga 410K review" video where an actor posing as U.S. soldier shoots at a book that turns out to be a Quran, which sparked outrage. The BBC found among other irregularities that the soldier's uniform is not used by the U.S. military and is easily purchased in Russia, and that the actor filmed was most likely a barman from Saint Petersburg related to a troll factory employee.[27][28]

The citizen-journalism site Bellingcat identified the team from Olgino as the real authors of a video attributed to the Azov Battalion in which masked soldiers threaten the Netherlands for organizing the referendum on the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement.[29]

Organized anti-Ukrainian campaign
See also: Media portrayal of the Ukrainian crisis

In the beginning of April 2014 there began an organized online campaign to shift public opinion in the Western world in a way that would be useful for Russian authorities regarding the Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014. Hacked and leaked documents from that time contain instructions for commenters posting at the websites of Fox News, The Huffington Post, TheBlaze, Politico, and WorldNetDaily. The requirement for the working hours for the trolls is also mentioned: 50 comments under news articles per day. Each blogger has to manage six accounts on Facebook, post at least three posts every day, and participate twice in the group discussions. Other employees have to manage 10 accounts on Twitter, publishing 50 tweets every day. Journalists concluded that Igor Osadchiy was a probable leader of the project, and the campaign itself was run by Internet Research Agency Ltd. Osadchiy denied his connection to the agency.[3][3]

The company is also one of the main sponsors of an anti-Western exhibition Material Evidence.[30]

In the beginning of 2016, Ukraine's state-owned news agency Ukrinform claimed to expose a system of bots in social networks, which called for violence against the Ukrainian government and for starting "The Third Maidan".[nb 1] They reported that the organizer of this system is the former anti-Ukrainian combatant Sergiy Zhuk from Donbass. He allegedly performed his internet activity from Vnukovo District in Moscow.[31]

Reactions

In March 2014, the Polish version of Newsweek expressed suspicion that Russia was employing people to "bombard" its website with pro-Russian comments on Ukraine-related articles.[32] Poland's governmental computer emergency response team later confirmed that pro-Russia commentary had flooded Polish internet portals at the start of the Ukrainian crisis.[33][34] German-language media websites were also flooded with pro-Russia comments in the spring of 2014.[35][36][37][38][39]

In late May 2014, the hacker group Anonymous International began publishing documents received from hacked emails of Internet Researches Agency managers.[8][12]

In May–June 2014, internet trolls invaded news media sites and massively posted pro-Russian comments in broken English.[40][8][41]

In March 2015 a service enabling censorship of sources of anti-Ukrainian propaganda in social networks inside Ukraine was launched.[42][43]

The United States Justice Department announced the indictment on 16 February 2018, of the Internet Research Agency while also naming more than a dozen individual suspects who allegedly worked there as part of the special counsel’s investigation into criminal interference with the 2016 election.[44]

Assessments

Russian bloggers Anton Nosik, Rustem Adagamov, and Dmitriy Aleshkovskiy have said that paid Internet-trolls don't change public opinion. Their usage is just a way to steal budget money.[7][8][12]

Leonid Volkov, a politician working for Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, suggests that the point of sponsoring paid Internet trolling is to make the Internet so distasteful that ordinary people are not willing to participate.[22]

The Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax in 11 September 2014, was the work of the Internet Research Agency, one of the trolling organizations linked to the Russian Government.[22]

On 16 February 2018 the Internet Research Agency, along with 13 Russian individuals and two other Russian organizations, was indicted following an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller with charges stemming from "impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of government."[45]

Earlier, based on the documents published by Anonymous international, Concord holding company was linked to the funding of several media outlets in Ukraine and Russia, including Kharkiv News Agency,[12] News of Neva, Newspaper About Newspapers, Business Dialog, and Journalist Truth.[7]

In September 2017 Facebook said that ads had been "geographically targeted".[46][47] Facebook revealed that during the 2016 United States presidential election, the agency had purchased advertisements on the website for US$100,000, 25% of which were geographically targeted to the U.S.[48] Facebook's chief security officer said that the ads "appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum".[46][47]

Per a 17 October 2017 BuzzFeed News report, the IRA duped American activists into taking real action via protests and self-defense trainings in what would seem to be a further attempt to exploit racial grievances.[49]
Lawsuit

In May 2015, a trolling company employee Lyudmila Savchuk in Saint Petersburg sued her employer for labor violations,[50] seeking to disclose its activities. Ivan Pavlov from human rights defending initiative Team 29 represented Savchuk, and the defendant "troll-factory" agreed to pay Savchuk her withheld salaries and to restore her job.[51]
Indictments

The individuals indicted by the Washington, D.C. grand jury in February 2018 are "Mikhail Ivanovich Bystrov, Mikhail Leonidovich Burchik, Aleksandra Yuryevna Krylova, Anna Vladislavovna Bogacheva, Sergey Pavlovich Polozov, Maria Anatolyevna Bovda, Robert Sergeyevich Bovda, Dzheykhun Nasimi Ogly Aslanov, Vadim Vladimirovich Podkopaev, Gleb Igorevitch Vasilchenko, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin and Vladimir Venkov.[52][53]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency