Activist unmasks Kremlin’s internet troll operation

A FORMER ‘‘Kremlin troll’’ has lifted the lid on a Russian internet company that floods the web with pro-Putin propaganda.

Lyudmila Savchuk, a civic activist, has gone to court to try to shut down the shadowy organisation, which is alleged to have tried to foment panic in the United States by fabricating reports of a terror attack.

Savchuk says that she went undercover at the St Petersburg company Internet Research to expose how employees were paid to pose as ordinary citizens to churn out material designed to support the Kremlin or to undermine domestic opposition, Ukraine, the United States and the European Union.

Savchuk, 34, has described how she worked a 9am to 9pm shift, posing as three different fictional people to push a prescribed set of news-related opinions for a salary of 41,000 roubles (NZ$1100) a month.

So-called ‘‘troll factories’’ gener- ating carefully choreographed proKremlin noise online have existed in Russia for years but have become much more prolific since opposition protests against President Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin peaked in 2011 and 2012.

An investigation by The New York Times published yesterday suggests that the scope of the troll factories includes sophisticated multimedia operations aimed at sowing panic in the United States.

It said there were links between Internet Research in St Petersburg and a series of internet hoaxes last year. On September 11, 2014, hundreds of Twitter accounts reported a non-existent explosion at a chemicals plant in St Mary Parish, Louisiana.

They targeted figures who would give the story maximum traction, doctored a screenshot from CNN’s home page and created clones of Louisiana TV stations and websites.

In December fake news reports declared an ebola outbreak in Atlanta and spread a false rumour that an unarmed black woman had been shot dead by police.