![]() All had to undergo a background check, he said he was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement. But there were some people who had advanced degrees, including doctorates. Qualifications for being hired weren’t demanding, he said, just a high-school diploma. dollar bill that is often a fixation for conspiracy theorists. State Department and with the eye in the pyramid” he said, referring to a symbol used on one side of the U.S. “I met people there who were convinced that the problem wasn’t that everything was awful in, but rather in the U.S. It was easy money, he said, asking that his full name not be used to avoid legal repercussions from his former employer. told RFE/RL’s Russian Service he took the job in 2018 after a suggestion from a friend. In a lengthy interview last week via the Telegram messaging app, Sergei K. ![]() worked for an outlet called the Federal News Agency (FAN), the company's name was Mixinfo.įAN, which has multiple links to Prigozhin and the Internet Research Agency, has dismissed the notion that it is part of a "troll factory." Prigozhin has seemingly sought to conceal the legal ownership of the company, changing its name and registration every few years. ![]() She ended up winning her case and was awarded 1 ruble in a symbolic victory. One Russian journalist went undercover to get a job at the operation and was later fired and filed a lawsuit claiming the working conditions and her contract violated labor law. In 2015, a man named Marat Burkhard told RFE/RL’s Russian Service how the work was conducted. intelligence community, its influence had been diluted as ex-employees of the company spoke out about the firm and what they did there. The “troll factory,” however, has seen its influence wane as social-media companies like Facebook and Twitter have gotten more sophisticated about blocking and removing anonymous accounts deemed to be trolls.Įven before the findings of the U.S. The company is still in operation, and media reports and other investigations have documented how Prigozhin has diversified his efforts to include funding private military mercenary companies, setting up operations in Africa and elsewhere. government’s main cyberagencies, claimed it knocked the “troll factory” off-line during the 2018 U.S. “Masquerading as Americans, these operatives used targeted advertisements, intentionally falsified news articles, self-generated content, and social-media platform tools to interact with and attempt to deceive tens of millions of social-media users in the United States,” a follow-up report by the U.S. intelligence report on Russian efforts to interfere in the previous year’s presidential election. Petersburg businessman named Yevgeny Prigozhin, the operation gained international infamy when it was specifically identified in the 2017 U.S. Petersburg firm whose registered name used to be the Internet Research Agency and which earned its moniker by pumping out conspiracy theories, half-truths, trolling social-media posts, and other misinformation. “There were people who really flew at with enthusiasm, and then some who came to work just realizing that all they were doing was nonsense,” Sergei K., a former employee of a Russian company that became known as the “Russian troll factory,” told RFE/RL in an interview. The money wasn’t bad, but the work was demanding: posting up to 120 comments a day, over an 11-hour shift - in chat rooms, on websites, and in social-media profiles belonging to specific Russian-language news outlets such as the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
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