Indiana dad tracks Russian trolls online
Josh Russell isn’t paid, but he is concerned about disinformation
At about 8 p.m. on most evenings, when the day is winding down, his two young sons are asleep and his wife is heading to bed, Josh Russell’s mind is on Russia.
With Russian trolls lurking undetected on the internet, the 39-year-old Indianapolis resident spends several hours immersing himself in the task of weeding them out.
He isn’t paid. He is concerned. The trolls Russell targets aren’t the ones who pop up in Twitter mentions, Facebook feeds and comment sections on news websites. Those trolls, who spark online discord through inflammatory, often off-topic messages, are difficult to distinguish from far-right and far-left American social media accounts, Russell said.
“I get a lot of requests on Twitter to look at people that have annoyed somebody. That’s just not the type of work that I do,” Russell told IndyStar. “There’s a misunderstanding there.”
Russell hunts the trolls who post and spread disinformation on Twitter, Facebook and the like, a manipulation of social media that brought company executives before Congress to detail the steps they are taking to address foreign influence.
The accounts Russell finds tend to fly under the radar. He uncovers them largely by looking at accounts that already have been exposed by social media companies and searching for clues that will lead to similar Russian accounts.
A Twitter account that already has been exposed might have followed or been followed by other Russian accounts. It might have been retweeted or promoted by other known Russian accounts.
Some clues are obvious, such as the word “USA” being part of the name. “When would an American Twitter account ever put USA in their name?” Russell asked rhetorically. Other clues could be a number of suspicious tweets or a profile picture that doesn’t seem to belong to the user.
When Russell has gathered his information, he decides on how he will disseminate his findings. Early the next morning, whether through a Twitter thread, a blog post or on the online publishing platform Medium, he posts his reveal. Russell said he does this about three or four times a week.
Isn’t this the job of the tech companies that manage these social media platforms?
Yes, Russell says.
But the companies only do so much, says Ben Nimmo, a cyber-investigator with the Atlantic Council, a Washing--
ton, D.C., think tank on international affairs. The companies can look at IP addresses to find what country a social media account is registered to.
People such as Russell, who do open source intelligence work, look at “context clues” or “linguistic clues,” Nimmo said.
Russell hunts for these clues, at least on the evening interviewed by IndyStar, in a T-shirt and jeans at a desk in the attic of his home.
“Lots of cigarette smoke and clicking of the keyboard,” said his wife, Codi, who usually is sleeping in their bedroom nearby.
It started during the 2016 election
Russell earns a living as a computer systems analyst at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, a daytime job that has nothing to do with his nighttime pursuits. His employer is aware of what he does, Russell said, and only asked that he make it clear that it’s separate from his employment there.
Russell’s interest in rooting out online disinformation began during the 2016 presidential election. He wasn’t exactly a Donald Trump supporter, but he knew he didn’t like Hillary Clinton. He also was part of the gamer community, which he described as “very far-right.” (His favorite games are “Starcraft,” “Counterstrike” and “World of Warcraft.”)
After his wife got into an argument on Facebook with a person who made what Russell called some “wild claims” about Clinton, he decided to explore his dislike for the Democratic presidential candidate. He slowly realized that much of what he believed about her was wrong.
“I’d been consuming this disinformation, and it built up this profile in my head of what she was,” Russell said.
At first, Russell said, he didn’t believe the “rumors” that Russians had meddled in the election. Then multiple national media outlets began reporting on Russian interference and mentioned specific social media accounts.
“Once I went out and started looking this information up,” he said, “I was kind of in shock that it was really happening, that these accounts existed.”
In January 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report that determined Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign in 2016 that sought to denigrate Hillary Clinton and boost President Trump. Russia’s goals were to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process,” the report said.
The report said the campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that used paid social media users and involved blending cyberactivity with efforts by the Russian government.
Last week, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey were questioned by U.S. senators on Capitol Hill over their companies’ efforts to combat the spread of disinformation on their platforms.
Since last year’s revelation, Russell became “obsessed” with finding disinformation online. Now, after about 18 months of sleuthing, Russell’s research has been used by multiple journalists in at least 40 news articles, he said.
“You don’t notice that you’re getting all of this extremely far-right information in your social media until it’s too late,” Russell said.
Vigilance against Russian trolls
Russell may not be a professional, but the spreadsheet with thousands of social media accounts he keeps on the high-powered gaming PC he built himself at 16 suggests he is not an amateur either.
Russell said he is not so much interested in spawning a “whole slew of amateur Russian troll hunters” as he is in seeing people become more thoughtful about sharing the information they find online.
Bret Schafer, a social media analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a national security advocacy group, said he is uneasy about “deputizing” people online to try to hunt out Russian trolls.
“We see someone having an argument online and the response is: a Russian troll,” Schafer said. “That’s concerning if you use the Russian troll label to discredit opinions.”
Like Russell, Schafer believes people can avoid taking part in Russian disinformation campaigns by being a critical user and not being “trigger happy” when posting information.
The job has its occupational hazards, as well, said Russell, who was profiled Aug. 21 by CNN. “I’ve gotten weird Twitter messages,” Russell said. “The night the CNN thing came out, someone decided to ‘dox’ me (find personal information) and send me a pizza.”
Election 2018 nears
Russell has no plans to stop his probing anytime soon. Much is still unclear about the events that led up to the 2016 election. Russell said he has uncovered just a fraction of what are believed to be hundreds of Russian social media accounts.
“It’s kind of insane how much stuff is still out there,” he said. “I still find thousands and thousands of Russian accounts.”