What to know about the Russian troll factory listed in Mueller’s indictment

Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 individuals for their attempts to meddle in the 2016 election. Twelve of them worked for the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Kremlin-linked Russian troll farm.

The indictment says the Internet Research Agency, which is based in St. Petersburg, “engaged in operations to interfere with the elections and political processes” starting as early as 2014.

It did so by spewing divisive propaganda, posing as US activists and posting politically charged content on social media or through online ads and encouraging people to attend rallies in person. The group used this campaign to sow discord, and by mid-2016, had settled on the goal of supporting Donald Trump and “disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

Overall, the indictment reveals in startling detail the extent of the Internet Research Agency’s disinformation operations during the 2016 election. Here are four things to know about the shadowy Russian entity at the center of the latest Mueller indictment.
1) The Internet Research Agency spread false stories and propaganda — making it hard to tell what was true

In 2015, Adrien Chen, in New York Times Magazine, wrote what is probably the definitive account of the obscure Internet Research Agency. Employees of the troll farm worked out of a nondescript building in St. Petersburg, which had “industrialized the art of trolling.”

Not all of it was for a foreign audience — much of it included pro-Kremlin propaganda for a domestic audience around hot-button issues, such as Ukraine. But in 2014, a hacker group published leaked emails said to be from the Internet Research Agency that revealed an expanding English-speaking operation. The hack included a list of troll accounts — accounts that, in some cases, interacted with and were followed by other troll accounts:

    One account was called “I Am Ass.” Ass had a Twitter account, an Instagram account, multiple Facebook accounts and his own website… Ass had a puerile sense of humor and only a rudimentary grasp of the English language.

    Ass had a half-dozen or so fans who regularly liked and commented on his posts. These fans shared some unusual characteristics. Their Facebook accounts had all been created in the summer of 2014. They all appeared to be well-dressed young men and women who lived in large American cities, yet they seemed to have no real-life friends. Instead, they spent their free time leaving anti-Obama comments on the Facebook posts of American media outlets like CNN, Politico and Fox News… It became clear that the vast majority of Ass’s fans were not real people. They were also trolls.

These accounts began to spread disinformation in the United States, and Chen noted a few coordinated campaigns that linked back to the Internet Research Agency: a fake chemical explosion in Louisiana on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2014 — complete with a doctored CNN page passed around on Twitter and a real text message sent out to area residents — and a fake Ebola outbreak and hoax police shooting in Atlanta in December 2014.

Chen also attended a live event in New York City called “Material Evidence,” which Chen described as “a real-life version of the hall of mirrors I’d stumbled into on Facebook”: an exhibit devoted to bizarre Russian propaganda about Ukraine and Syria.

In Russia, “by working every day to spread Kremlin propaganda,” Chen wrote, “the paid trolls have made it impossible for the normal Internet user to separate truth from fiction.” The US-focused efforts suggest a similar goal.

Source: Vox News