User:Vlad fedorov/Internet troll squads

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Internet teams of Russian state security services are groups of people, allegedly from the FSB, who work in the Internet to disseminate disinformation, conduct astroturfing, and prevent free discussion of undesirable subjects by harassing and intimidating political bloggers ^[1].

1 Discovery of the phenomenon
2 Typical features of people from the squads
3 Tactics of Internet security teams
4 Internet teams in Russian literature
5 References
6 External links
7 Notes

[edit] Discovery of the phenomenon

This phenomenon has been discovered in RuNet by a group of investigative journalists led of Anna Polyanskaya ^[2], a former assistant to the Russian politician Galina Starovoitova ^[3] They found the appearance of organized and fairly professional "squads", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who work in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy blogs and internet newspapers of RuNet in Russian blogosphere. These Internet teams appeared suddenly on Russian language forums only in 1999. They have been presumably organized by Russian FSB service, main successor of KGB ^[1] ^[4]

The findings by Anna Polyanskaya and her colleagues have been independently confirmed by journalists from Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny who claimed that "at least a dozen of active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating Polish internet. Not only do they scrutinize polish websites (like those supporting Byelorussian opposition), but also perform such actions, as – for instance – contributing to internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labelled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web." ^[5]

Another confirmation came from publications by two other active RuNet participants, psychologist Vladimur Bagryansky and writer Grigory Svirsky ^[1]. They consider activities of the squads as a typical active measure and a form of internet censorship that has been designed by FSB to control "open" blogs that can not yet be closed by Russian government. They also described a campaign of disinformation and intimidation directed against Ivan Lomko, one of authors of the original publication, in Russian Internet media, including disabling his personal computer and destroying all traces of discussion about FSB squads at the website of Moscow News. ^[1]

[edit] Typical features of people from the squads

The people from the Internet teams have certain distinct features some of which are the following ^[4]:

Boundless loyalty to Vladimir Putin and his circle
Respect and admiration for the KGB and FSB
Hatred of dissidents and human rights organizations and activists, political prisoners and journalists, especially Anna Politkovskaya and Sergei Kovalev.
Anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism.
Accusation of Russophobia against everyone who disagrees with them.
tendency to accuse their opponents of being insane during arguments.
Low cultural level
Round-the-clock presence on forums. At least one of the uniform members of the team can be found online at all times, always ready to repulse any “attack” by a liberal.

[edit] Tactics of Internet security teams

Individual work on opponents. "As soon as an opposition-minded liberal arrives on a forum, expressing a position that makes them a clear "ideological enemy”, he is immediately cornered and subjected to “active measures” by the unified web-brigade. Without provocation, the opponent is piled on with abuse or vicious “arguments” of the sort that the average person cannot adequately react to. As a result, the liberal either answers sharply, causing a scandal and getting himself labeled a “boor” by the rest of the brigade, or else he starts to make arguments against the obvious absurdities, to which his opponents pay no attention, but simply ridicule him and put forth other similar arguments." ^[4]
Accusations that opponents are working for “enemies”. The opponents are accused of taking money from Berezovskiy, the CIA, MOSSAD, Saudi Arabia, Zionists, or Chechen rebels.
Making personally offensive comments, especially of sexual nature.
Remarkable ability to reveal personal information about their opponents and their quotes from old postings, sometimes more than a year old.
Teamwork. "They unwaveringly support each other in discussions, ask each other leading questions, put fine points on each other’s answers, and even pretend not to know each other. If an opponent starts to be hounded, this hounding invariably becomes a team effort, involving all of the three to twenty nicknames that invariably are present on any political forum 24 hours a day." ^[4]
Appealing to the Administration. Th members of teams often "write mass collective complaints about their opponents to the editors, site administrators, or the electronic “complaints book”, demanding that one or another posting or whole discussion thread they don’t like be removed, or calling for the banning of individuals they find problematic." ^[4]
Destruction of inconvenient forums. For example, on the site of the Moscow News, all critics of Putin and the FSB "were suddenly and without any explanation banned from all discussions, despite their having broken none of the site’s rules of conduct. All the postings of this group of readers, going back a year and a half, were erased by the site administrator." ^[4]
Sendind email containing viruses to their opponents.

[edit] Internet teams in Russian literature

The FSB activities in the Internet have been described in a story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky. The story is about a women who tried to compile a list of FSB agents operating in the Internet. The characters are fictional, but all conflicts and problems are real, as well as the typical language of Internet bloggers ^[6] According to the author, he was interested in the moral aspect of such activities. He wrote:

"It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one do not see a disfigured body or eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, human soul lives by its own fundamental laws that force it to pay the price for the "virtual crime" in the very real life". ^[1]