Internet Research Agency

Such beautiful architecture belies a rotten core within...

Someone is wrong on The Internet

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The Internet "Research" Agency (IRA) is a Russian troll farm operating out of Olgino, Saint Petersburg. The troll farm became notorious for its interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of former Troll-in-Chief and Putin fanboy Donald Trump. It has also been involved in running pro-Kremlin propaganda networks regarding the War in Ukraine since 2014.

The IRA was founded in mid-2013.^[3] The terms "Trolls from Olgino" or "Olgino's trolls" have become a sort of catch-all label for paid agents spreading Russian propaganda online, and does not necessarily refer to the IRA proper.^[4]

The trolls themselves[edit]

The actual trolls in question are often just young people looking for a job.^[5] The trolls themselves are mostly politically illiterate about foreign affairs.^{[note 1]} To quote the US State Department:

Some of the agency’s trolls are “fanatics,” but most “are just young people who want to make money. They’re so politically illiterate that Putin, Obama … they don’t know the difference,” said Burkhard.

The jobs they apply for often sound innocent, with titles such as social media specialists, Internet operators and copywriters.

“First they make you write about something neutral — Vegetarianism: Pros and Cons,” Burkhard said. Later, “to plump up the political content, they send in a guy to talk about the topic of the day, so that at least the employees have a little background on the topic. But the guy himself has an extremely low level of understanding, so it all looks completely absurd.”^[5]

The trolls work 12 hour shifts where they are expected to endlessly type bullshit that serves Russian interests.^[5] If an employee is even slightly late to work, they get fined 500 rubles, or "about 9 USD."^[5]

The founder[edit]

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Internet Research Agency.

The company was founded by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin,^[6] a man who until recently was a close confidante of Putin.^[7]) Prigozhin also had a hand in founding the Russian mercenary company named the Wagner Group.^[8]

Prigozhin was among those indicted by Special Counsel Mueller for Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.^[9]

Prigozhin reportedly didn't care all that much about being named in the indictment. We are going to quote his exact (apathetic) words on the subject below:

Americans are very impressionable people, they see what they want to see. [...] I have great respect for them. I’m not at all upset that I’m on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see one.^[9]

Prigozhin was also named in the indictment as controlling "Concord Catering", a company that funds the IRA.^[9] The indictment goes on to say that by September of 2016 the budget for the project that included the interference campaign "exceeded 73 million rubles", or over 1.2 million US dollars.^[9]

In a February 2023 interview conducted on a Wagner Group Telegram channel, Prigozhin admitted to being the founder of the IRA:

I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time. It was founded to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian narrative from the West.^[10]

On August 23rd, 2023, almost two months after Wagner's mutiny, Prigozhin died aboard an airplane leaving Moscow under fairly suspicious circumstances.^[11]

Interference in the 2016 US presidential election[edit]

The IRA engaged in organized astroturf campaigns on social media on behalf of Trump as part of the wider Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. The Russians' goal was to ruin any chance of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning the election.^[12] Both the Trump campaign and the Russians used similar tactics to stoke deep political discord within the United States electorate, including through social media and "selective leaking".^[12]

The Russian social media astroturf campaign began in 2014 as a "generalized program" to fuck with United States politics, but by 2016 had grown to favor Trump and disparage Clinton specifically.^[12] The IRA, which received funding from "an oligarch linked to Putin,"^[12] created fake accounts on Twitter and Instagram and opened group pages on Facebook to "attract followers" with their polemic bullshit on "race, gender, and other polarizing content."^[12] The attention the astroturf campaign received grew, and eventually millions of Americans were viewing their bullshit. It helped that American political figures would spread the Russian bullshit even further.^[12]

Some IRA employees would even travel to the United States to conduct research on their targets and gather photographs for their posts. These Russians in particular were among those indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.^[12] 12 of the 13 Russians named in the indictment worked for the IRA in some capacity.^[9]

Russian trolls stole the identities of American citizens to use as cover for their social media ops.^[13] The trolls also bought political advertisements in the name of "US individuals and companies."^[13] The Russians also, without revealing that they were foreign agents, "solicited and compensated" American personalities to "promote and disparage" candidates.^[13]

According to the Intelligence Community Assessment, Putin personally ordered interference in the 2016 election.^[13] What this means is that the "trolls from Olgino" were not rogue agents, but operating with orders directly from the Kremlin. Putin also personally favored Trump, and ordered for an organized character assassination campaign against Madame Clinton.^[13]

Ukraine[edit]

The IRA has been heavily involved in running an anti-Ukraine propaganda campaign on social media. Starting in April 2014, a systemic effort had begun by Russian propagandists to shift Western perceptions of the unrest following the Euromaidan crisis that overthrew the previous pro-Russian government.^[14] Leaked documents also contained instructions for the Russian trolls to engage in and flood prominent American media sites (social and otherwise) with pro-Kremlin horseshit.^[14] To quote Buzzfeed News:

The documents show instructions provided to the commenters that detail the workload expected of them. On an average working day, the Russians are to post on news articles 50 times. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook accounts publishing at least three posts a day and discussing the news in groups at least twice a day. By the end of the first month, they are expected to have won 500 subscribers and get at least five posts on each item a day. On Twitter, the bloggers are expected to manage 10 accounts with up to 2,000 followers and tweet 50 times a day.^[14]

In 2016, the Ukrainian state-owned news platform Ukrinform claimed that a network of pro-Kremlin bots had been operating on social networking platforms which called for violence against the Ukrainian government and spread calls to start the "Third Maidan".^{[note 2]} Ukrinform went on to identify the person supposedly behind the bot network in question: Sergiy Zhuk, a veteran of the War in Donbass on the side of the pro-Russian insurgents. He was alleged to run the bot network from a neighborhood in Moscow.^[15]

See also[edit]

• Think tank - These are, like the IRA, propaganda mills, just with a more intellectual (and therefore professional) veneer.
• Professional troll - What these guys in effect are.
• Wagner Group - Another one of Prigozhin's ventures to further Russian interests on the international stage. In the case of Wagner, they operate in meatspace as mercenaries rather than cyberspace as paid trolls.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]