Russia Censors News Reports About Anti-Putin Ice Graffiti, Leaving Its Contents Entirely Up To Our Collective Imagination

from the putin-on-a-show dept

Readers here will be familiar with the Streisand Effect, by which a topic or information becomes wildly viral due to the very attempts at censoring it. The idea is that by trying to keep Subject X out of the news, the public suddenly is far more exposed to Subject X as a result of news coverage of the cover-up. This story slightly deviates from the Streisand Effect formula, but only in the most hilarious way.

People should know by now that Vladimir Putin is a strong-arm "President" that runs the country like a fiefdom. As such, most if not all wings of his government serve him personally far more directly than they do his constituents. Evidence of this is practically everywhere, especially in how his government and non-government organizations in Russia react to his political opponents. Typically, his political rivals are jailed, silenced, or otherwise tamped down viciously in terms of how much exposure they can get to challenge his political position. A recent example of this concerns presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, whose supporters painted the ice on a frozen river in St. Petersburg with the mildest anti-Putin slogan, reading "Against Putin." As a result, Roskomnadzor, the government agency featured in our pages for its censorship of websites in the name of literally anything it can dream up, ordered news groups to censor the contents of the message-on-ice in any reporting on the incident.

On Monday, the St. Petersburg-based Business News Agency said it was ordered by a local branch of the state media watchdog Roskomnadzor to remove the photograph of the graffiti from the river.

“We can’t display the protesters’ slogan at the urgent request of Roskomnadzor,” the agency wrote in a text superimposed on the graffiti while keeping the photo of the frozen Fontanka River intact, as seen in a picture tweeted by local activists.

And here's what the images accompanying the news reports now show.

Here's the thing: the reader is now free to imagine any and all anti-Putin messages scrawled in the ice now that the mild "Against Putin" message has been covered up. In addition to the classic Streisand Effect of the public now being way more aware than they would have been otherwise of the general anti-Putin sentiment that exists with these supporters of Sobchak, creative minds across Russia will fill in the censorious blank as to what the message was. Perhaps it read: "Putin impregnated my cow and smells of last week's borscht"? Perhaps it was just a string of the names of journalists that keep mysteriously dying after criticizing Putin or his government?

The beautiful part is: we don't know! And this censorship has freed us to imagine anything and everything that could possibly be contained in that message. And, if this writer is any indication, our imaginations can come up with far more insulting messages than "Against Putin."

And, in case the hints here weren't strong enough, I very much encourage you to prove me right in the comments section. Regardless, it's long past time that world leaders learned that these censorship attempts do and will always backfire.

Filed Under: censorship, russia, streisand effect, vladimir putin

Russia Has Banned VPNs

from the who-needs-privacy-anyway dept

We've noted for some time that Russia has been engaged in a slow but steady assault on privacy tools like VPNs. As with most countries that have an adversarial relationship with the truth, the entire effort has been couched as necessary to protect national security and cultural morality, though the real agenda is to help prop up the country's domestic surveillance efforts and Putin's ham-fisted internet filters. This push accelerated with a new surveillance bill last year that not only mandated new encryption backdoors, but also imposed harsh new data-retention requirements on ISPs and VPN providers.

But that was only the opening salvo in Russia's assault on citizen privacy. The country has since accelerated efforts to ban anonymity on messaging apps, while simultaneously pushing new legislation that would make operating as a VPN provider in Russia all but impossible. The legislation, which would require that ISPs ban the use of VPNs sailed through the Russian Parliament:

The State Duma on Friday unanimously passed a bill that would oblige Internet providers to block websites that offer VPN services. Many Russians use VPNs to access blocked content by routing connections through servers outside the country. The lawmakers behind the bill argued that the move could help to enforce Russia's ban on disseminating extremist content online. The bill has to be approved at the upper chamber of parliament and signed by the president before it comes into effect.

Over the weekend, Putin signed the bill into law, and that story notes this bizarre "explanation" of the bill:

Leonid Levin, the head of Duma's information policy committee, has said the law is not intended to impose restrictions on law-abiding citizens but is meant only to block access to "unlawful content," RIA news agency said.

Needless to say, this wasn't received particularly well by Russian citizens that enjoy having something vaguely-resembling privacy, with 1,000 or so protesting in Moscow last weekend over the looming law:

Pavel Rassudov, 34, the former head of the Pirate Party campaign group, said at the march that "restrictions on the internet began in 2011," as the opposition to Putin held mass rallies in Moscow. "The authorities realised the Internet was a tool for mobilisation, that it brings people out onto the streets," Rassudov said. Another marcher, Lyudmila Toporova, 56, said she came to the rally because "Freedom is the most important thing in life. That's why I'm here."

Of course the end result of this kind of ridiculous policy is that encryption itself is undermined, and everybody winds up less secure. And while you'd like to think this sort of thing wouldn't happen here in the States, if you've watched the endless efforts to undermine encryption and demonize VPNs, the last five years or so, we're probably only a domestic terrorist attack or two away from voters being scared into supporting similar idiotic policy for the "safety and security" of the republic.

Filed Under: bans, dumas, encryption, privacy, russia, security, vladimir putin, vpns

Putin's Internet Trolls Are Stoking The Vitriolic Fire By Posing As Trump Supporters

from the disinformation-nation dept

Over the last year we've repeatedly noted how Putin's Internet propaganda efforts go well beyond flinging insults in news story comment sections. Thanks to whistleblowing by the likes of Lyudmila Savchuk, we learned how Putin employs multiple factories operated by a rotating crop of shell companies whose sole purpose is to fill the internet with Putin-friendly drivel twenty-four-hours a day. Early reports noted how these efforts focused on what you'd expect from Putin: discrediting reporters, distorting Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, or opposing Finland's entry into NATO.

But a little more than a year ago, New York Times Magazine's Adrian Chen decided to see just how deep that particular rabbit hole went.

What he uncovered was a global, not-at-all subtle disinformation network of well-constructed hoaxes, heavily-produced YouTube videos, fake Wikipedia entries, and tens of thousands of bogus social media accounts -- many of which were designed to pollute the global discourse pool here in the States. The report went so far as to highlight one disinformation effort where Putin-paid trolls posed as Americans online, directing users to a fully-realized museum in Chelsea, Manhattan professing to show the "other side" of the Ukranian conflict (you say invasion, I say tomahto).

That Putin's trolls have extended these tactics to the US election is more than likely. In fact, in an accompanying podcast discussing his story, Chen notes that he also discovered that a number of Putin's disinformation pugilists have been posing as Trump supporters for some time -- something New Yorker contributor Ben Taub was quick to highlight this week just as the DNC e-mail hack hysteria began to peak:Obviously this insight begins to carry new meaning as Russia's involvement in the DNC hack becomes clearer. Many of course have spent significant calories trying to suggest a direct Putin to Trump connection; that's certainly the narrative being pushed by a DNC with a vested interest in avoiding any real conversation about what the e-mails actually say. But it's equally possible that Putin's simply using Internet propaganda to pour gasoline on a rolling dumpster fire that's already veering out of control.

This level of propaganda is something the United States -- already effectively at war with itself -- is not only very good at, but incredibly susceptible to. As a nation we're already prone to over-reaction in tech policy (ban all encryption!), adore responses that make already bad situations worse (immediately launch a cyberattack on Russia!), have an echo-chamber media for whom fact checking is often optional, and an ongoing, passionate relationship with cybersecurity hypocrisy.

During election season we're additionally susceptible to this type of attack; sportsmen in our color-coded onesies and ear plugs -- ready to pounce at the faintest suggestion that our preferred punishment candidate has anything other than the noblest of intentions. We're wading into some very dangerous and ugly territory during what's already been one of the most divisive years on record. Enter the latest expanded claims that the DNC hacker was likely under Putin's employ:

"The researchers, at Arlington, Va.-based ThreatConnect, traced the self-described Romanian hacker Guccifer 2.0 back to an Internet server in Russia and to a digital address that has been linked in the past to Russian online scams. Far from being a singly, sophisticated hacker, Guccifer 2.0 is more likely a collection of people from the propaganda arm of the Russian government meant to deflect attention away from Moscow as the force behind the DNC hacks and leaks of emails, the researchers found."

“These are bureaucrats, not sophisticated hackers,” Rich Barger, ThreatConnect’s chief intelligence officer, told The Daily Beast. In blog posts and in interviews with journalists, Barger said, Guccifer 2.0 has made inconsistent remarks and given a version of how he penetrated the DNC networks that technically don’t make sense. For instance, the hacker claims to have used a software flaw that didn’t exist until December 2015 in order to break into the DNC networks last summer.

Given countries are busy hacking each other every god damned day, Russia's involvement here -- if true -- shouldn't be a shock. Neither should Russia's use of propaganda and hybrid warfare, a response it believes is justified retaliation to decades of this country's own information warfare efforts. Enter the U.S. media stage left, not only hysterically surprised that nation states hack each other, but immediately losing the forest for the trees; happily insisting the actual content of the e-mails are meaningless -- when they're not busy pushing op-eds advocating all out cyber war. If this is a test of things to come, it's one the press is already failing.

We're already up to our necks in our own marketing, political disinformation and propaganda, leaving us incapable of differentiating Russian disinformation from home grown vitriol. We're barely coordinated enough to agree on what cybersecurity should mean -- much less differentiate hostile Russian propaganda from the vanilla rancor and bile pervading the internet on any given afternoon. Ill-prepared, poorly informed and confused as hell, there's numerous possible responses from the United States here. Given our history with abysmal cybersecurity policy and even worse media dysfunction -- none of them are likely to be any good.

Welcome to the post-truth era's disinformation wars, ladies and gentlemen. Team "level headed" is going to need all the help it can get.

Filed Under: donald trump, politics, russia, trolls, vladimir putin
Companies: twitter

Putin Says All Encryption Must Be Backdoored In Two Weeks

from the make-it-snappy dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the push by the Russian Duma to pass a massive new surveillance bill that would mandate backdoors to encryption as well as massive data retention requirements for service providers, including saying that they need to store recordings of phone calls. As you may have heard, earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the bill into law. And apparently to prove that he's serious about all of this, Putin has also signed an executive order telling the FSB (the modern version of the KGB) to make sure it gets encryption keys to unlock everything within the next two weeks.

After signing controversial anti-terrorist legislation earlier today, President Putin ordered the Federal Security Service (the FSB, the post-Soviet successor to the KGB) to produce encryption keys to decrypt all data on the Internet. According to the executive order, the FSB has two weeks to do it. Responsibility for carrying out Putin's instructions falls on Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB.

As the article notes, there's a lot of uncertainty here, because in many cases, when things are encrypted locally or where there are private keys, there isn't any way for service providers to turn over any keys.

What happens next is a little unclear. But it seems likely that the Russian government will use this to attack certain encrypted communications services, and potentially block and/or fine them for failing to comply with the new law. There has been a lot of talk about how Ed Snowden has been speaking out against this law, as he should. Considering that he uses a number of different encryption systems to communicate with the world, this law puts him very directly in danger. But it also puts lots of other people at risk as well. As we've been pointing out for a while, encryption does much more to protect everyday citizens than it does to hide the communications of "terrorists." Undermining that puts a lot more people at risk of people hacking into their stuff than being a victim of a terrorist attack.

Filed Under: backdoors, data retention, ed snowden, encryption, fsb, mass surveillance, russia, surveillance, vladimir putin

Twitter Bans Obvious Putin Parody Account, Retreats After International Shaming

from the artificially-outraged dept

Twitter is getting the wrong kind of attention this week for its decision to ban a number of Russian parody accounts before the global internet shamed the company into restoring them. The @DarthPutinKGB account, which before it was deleted had more than 50,000 followers, was struck down mercilessly by the Twitter ban hammer on Tuesday. The account deletion came alongside a flurry of Twitter bans on several such accounts, including one making fun of Russian Ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko -- and @SovietSergey, an account poking fun at Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Twitter's move was quickly derided on the social networking platform and Internet at large, with users offering up their greatest hits from the temporarily-deceased parody account under the #NoGulagForDarthPutinKGB hashtag. Even Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves took some time out to highlight the stupidity of Twitter's decision:Twitter's move comes as Putin himself has increasingly relied on Russian propaganda to defend the country's aggressively homophobic laws and its recent not-so-subtle invasion of the Ukraine. Many of these employed trolls remain happily Tweeting -- as it's hard to differentiate them from the din of ordinary internet racism, homophobia, political infighting and stupidity, which is obviously quite by design. It's very likely that's Putin's professional internet trolls and bots played more than a small role in inundating Twitter with requests to have the accounts banned.

But Twitter's response to media inquiries was initially notably sterile, the company only directing users to Twitter's two primary conditions for parody accounts:

"Bio: The bio should indicate that the user is not affiliated with the account subject by stating a word such as "parody," "fake," "fan," or "commentary," and be done so in a way that would be understood by the intended audience.

Account name: The name should not be the exact name of the account subject without some other distinguishing word, such as "not," "fake," or "fan," and be done so in a way that would be understood by the intended audience."

An archived copy of the account indicates it did use the word parody in the byline, just apparently not clearly enough for the parody police at Twitter's support department:So the ban was somewhat consistent with Twitter's policies in that @DarthPutinKGB didn't scream parody in giant, neon letters loud enough for the dimmest to understand. But that Doesn't make Twitter's decisions or its rules any less ridiculous -- something Twitter higher ups obviously agreed with given the reversal on the decision less than a day later. It also makes you wonder about the arbitrary nature of Twitter's parody rules and how easily they can be abused, given Twitter's selective enforcement of them -- depending on whether or not the Internet at large gets annoyed enough.

The constant, obvious jokes -- and the fact the account only had 57,000 followers (compared to the 3.2 million followers of the Kremlin's official Twitter account) should have naturally clued most people in to the fact the account doesn't actually belong to Putin. Though reversed, Twitter's move was a senseless attempt at protecting humorless idiots from themselves, made all the more ironic by the fact the only people "offended" by the account -- were likely professional Russian propagandists and bots flooding Twitter's support systems in an attempt to stifle free speech.

Filed Under: abuse, darthputinkgb, parody, russia, vladimir putin
Companies: twitter

Putin Aide, Apparently Non-Ironically, Gives Facebook A Lecture On Free Speech

from the pots,-kettles,-and-more-pots dept

As everybody knows, Vladimir Putin simply adores free speech. That's made perfectly clear every time a political challenger winds up mysteriously murdered on a Moscow street, or any time his massive, manufactured troll army shouts down those critical of Russian policies on the Internet. It's made repeatedly clear in percussive fashion each and every time an outspoken journalist winds up mysteriously murdered for simply asking questions, and it's abundantly clear from the 10,000 or so websites the Russian government aggressively filters.

Like so many of his international mega-nation contemporaries, free speech is kind of Putin's thing.

So without the slightest whiff of hypocrisy it should be unsurprising for many people to learn that Putin and friends think Facebook's a little heavy handed on the free speech front. Putin aide Igor Shchegolev is urging Russians to abandon Facebook after the social media website deleted a number of posts containing the word "khokhol" -- which in certain context can be used insultingly to suggest Ukranians are backward peasants. This is, says an administration that thinks assassination an acceptable conversation and debate tactic, wholly unacceptable:

"Senior officials are urging their countrymen to abandon Facebook in favor of domestic social media, saying that the latter offer greater freedom of speech, after Mark Zuckerberg’s firm deleted a string of posts containing a slang Russian term for Ukrainians...The news agency ITAR-TASS reported Igor Shchegolev, an aide to President Vladimir Putin as saying that switching to rivals like Vkontakte would help users avoid having their content blocked."

Russia's relationship with Facebook was already strained after the website temporarily suspended the accounts of Kremlin media watchdog Maxim Ksenzov, and pro-Putin writer Eduard Bagirov. Of course that's not to say Facebook isn't equally awful when it comes to free speech. While Facebook says it deletes the word because it can be used as an ethnic slang, "Khokhol" can also be used to describe a specific haircut and isn't always used as an insult. According to the Russian Times, Russians have been having a very good time highlighting the stupidity of Facebook's inconsistent policies:

"Intrigued by the phenomenon, Russian journalists and bloggers began to experiment with testing Facebook's limits, deliberately using the word khokhly in their posts. Last week Facebook issued a one-week block of journalist Maxim Kononenko's page for posting a poem by Alexander Pushkin, a man widely considered to be Russia's greatest poet, containing the word khokhly."

Meanwhile, Russian Facebook equivalent Vkontakte was quick to welcome annoyed users into the fold:

Готовы принять всех заблокированных на Фейсбуке пользователей — добро пожаловать! Снова :)

— George Lobushkin (@lobushkin) July 7, 2015

"We're ready to accept all the blocked Facebook users. Welcome! Again :)"

Perhaps Putin's government and Facebook can somehow make up and join forces to create a global super-storm of censorship and incompetence? Imagine the possibilities of somehow combining Facebook's love of overly-curated and blandly-unoffensive walled gardens, with Putin's utterly brutal love of censorship and murder. Surely there's an amazing new business model buried somewhere therein.

Filed Under: free speech, khokhol, russia, surveillance, ukraine, vladimir putin
Companies: facebook, vk, vkontakte

Russia's Internet Propaganda Farm Is Being Dragged To Court For Labor Violations

from the these-are-not-the-droids-you're-looking-for dept

While propaganda is everywhere, we've been exploring lately how Putin's Russia has been taking Internet disinformation to an entirely new level. Numerous whistleblowers and media reports have spent the last year or so unearthing Russian Internet propaganda factories, where armies of sockpuppets get paid 40,000 to 50,000 rubles ($800 to $1,000) a month to create proxied, viable, fake personas -- specifically tasked with pumping the internet full of toxic disinformation twenty-four hours a day.

Unlike some similar campaigns by the U.S. Russia originally didn't try very hard to hide these operations' existence, but that's already changing. As numerous writers have discovered (myself included), even pointing out that these operations exist will grab you a heaping helping of anonymous troll scorn. If you still haven't perused it, this recent New York Times Magazine breakdown of Russia's troll armies is essential reading.

In light of Putin's not-so-gentle treatment of critics, the bravery some of the program's whistleblowers continues to be impressive. Lyudmila Savchuk worked at the Russian Internet bile factory for two months, ultimately leaving after finding the work morally repugnant. She's since been leaking a treasure trove of information about the program, including clandestine videos showing some of the program employees at work. She's also spearheading a lawsuit against The Agency for Internet Studies, which was finally dragged into court this week after missing the first court hearing.

The company's specifically being sued for underpayment and a number of labor violations, since it unsurprisingly wasn't keen on providing employees with traditionally-necessary paperwork. Amusingly, a representative for "The Agency" hoped to settle with Savchuk, but she's apparently having none of it:

"The agency is now seeking to avoid public scrutiny by offering to compensate her. Yekaterina Nazarova, defending, told the Petrogradsky district court judge the agency was ready to settle with Savchuk, who had asked for a symbolic sum of 10,000 roubles (£118). Nazarova offered to wire the sum to Savchuk’s account, then quickly left the court without speaking to the press.

Savchuk said: “I am very pleased, they pretended they don’t exist at all and now they have come out of the shadows for the first time – we saw their representative. But I will feel that I won only after the troll factory closes completely."

The problem is that the operation Savchuk's trying to shut down operates under a spiderweb of various companies with an endless variety of names across numerous different industries (including construction) -- all of which are protected by the Russian government. As such, it's going to be a Sisyphean and dangerous game of legal whac-a-mole; one you'd hope Savchuk survives.

Filed Under: internet, internet trolls, labor violations, lyudmila savchuk, propaganda, russia, trolls, vladimir putin

Will Corporate Sovereignty Disputes Lead To Wars One Day?

from the even-if-they-don't,-they-hardly-promote-peace dept

Last August, we wrote about the most egregious corporate sovereignty award (so far): $50 billion against Russia, under a treaty that it never even ratified, in favor of the major shareholders of the Yukos oil company. Of course, as everyone pointed out, being awarded $50 billion was one thing, collecting it, quite another. Most people probably assumed that it would be practically impossible to squeeze that money out of a recalcitrant Russia, but we now learn that some serious steps towards that goal have recently been taken, as reported by Der Spiegel (original in German). In Belgium, the bank accounts of the Russian embassy were frozen, as were those of Russia's EU and NATO missions, while in France, something similar happened, with Russian accounts blocked at 40 banks.

Understandably, this did not go down well with the Russian government. The country's deputy foreign minister warned, "whoever dares to do that must understand that it will lead to reprisals," something his boss, Sergei Lavrov echoed. Meanwhile, Lavrov's own boss, Vladimir Putin, was also well aware of the situation, and was quoted as saying: "we will defend our interests using legal means."

A story on France 24 reports that Russia has already threatened to retaliate against state-linked foreign firms operating in the country, so that's one way that things could escalate. But more seriously, the relations between Russia and EU nations are extremely strained over the conflict in eastern Ukraine; the last thing the situation needs is additional tension caused by arguments over a massive fine. Even if corporate sovereignty doesn't actually cause a war -- well, let's hope not -- the Yukos award may turn into a hindrance to resolving an existing conflict. That's yet another reason to get rid of the whole deeply-flawed system before it causes more serious damage.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: belgium, corporate sovereignty, france, frozen assets, isds, russia, trade wars, vladimir putin, war
Companies: yukos

Putin's Internet Propaganda War Is Much Bigger And Weirder Than You Think, Now Extending Into The States

from the ministry-of-truth dept

We've been writing lately about how Putin and Russia have shifted their internet propaganda forces into overdrive, employing multiple factories operated by a company named Internet Research, filling the internet with Putin-friendly drivel twenty-four-hours a day. The insight into these efforts has become more and more interesting as whistleblowers have started exposing (and most recently suing over) them the last six months. Contrary to similar efforts in other countries (U.S. included), there's absolutely no subtlety on display here, and the scale is unlike anything the internet has ever seen.

Interestingly, many of the comments to my last piece made some really compelling points regarding what Putin is up to. Here's a small smattering:

"Karl Bode, author of this very article, has most likely unwittingly fallen for an ukrainian-made honey-pot propaganda trap."

"I cant help see this article as another stone in the western propaganda campaign against Putin the last few months, and not really about social media propaganda."

"The story of that Russian propaganda factory that caught Karl Bode's attention (assuming the story is even true and is not itself a counter-propaganda gig similar to 'WMD') seems very amateurish in comparison to the depth and sophistication to the US military's sock-puppetry programs."

"By writing this horse shit, all Techdirt has done is shown that it's writers are easily manipulated. I expect more pro-US, anti-Russia propaganda from them in the future."

Anybody who knows me remotely would find accusations that I'm "pro-US" pretty damn funny given how I've spent most of my career criticizing US government policies. Are these comments ingenious satire? Russian propagandists? Domestic garden-variety home-grown tin-foil hatters? The benefit of propaganda is you just can't tell. But science pretty consistently shows that comments can pretty easily impact discourse, even if what's being posted is relatively unhinged from reality. So to be clear, it's true: I'm a total lackey for western imperialists; a pawn of the NSA and CIA, and as most people know, I make a killing freelancing as a propagandist for AT&T corporation.

Moving on. While there's no doubt the United States has employed similar tactics for years (profitable wars and shitty foreign policy don't sell themselves, you know), that doesn't make the sheer scale of Putin's troll army any less impressive...or real.

The New York Times Magazine has an outstanding exploration of Putin's propaganda efforts and Russia's Internet Research Agency, connecting a series of incredibly well-constructed hoaxes using fake YouTube videos, fake Wikipedia entries, and thousands of Twitter accounts -- many of which were designed to pollute the global discourse pool here in the States. Author Adrian Chen headed to St. Petersburg to track down and talk to whistleblower Lyudmila Savchuk, who goes into greater detail than ever before about the program. Again, there's propaganda, and then there's what Putin's up to, which is a factory-grade internet assault on reality injected with steroids and caffeine:

"As Savchuk and other former employees describe it, the Internet Research Agency had industrialized the art of trolling. Management was obsessed with statistics — page views, number of posts, a blog’s place on LiveJournal’s traffic charts — and team leaders compelled hard work through a system of bonuses and fines. “It was a very strong corporate feeling,” Savchuk says. Her schedule gave her two 12-hour days in a row, followed by two days off. Over those two shifts she had to meet a quota of five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and 150 to 200 comments on other workers’ posts. The grueling schedule wore her down. She began to feel queasy, she said, posting vitriol about opposition leaders of whom she had no actual opinion, or writing nasty words about Ukrainians when some of her closest acquaintances, including her own ex-husband, were Ukrainian."

These efforts have become so massive, local journalists claim they have, at least for now, managed to subvert the historical anti-authoritarian and free speech benefits of the internet:

"All of this has contributed to a dawning sense, among the Russian journalists and activists I spoke with, that the Internet is no longer a natural medium for political opposition. “The myth that the Internet is controlled by the opposition is very, very old,” says Leonid Volkov, a liberal politician and campaign manager to Alexei Navalny. “It’s not true since at least three years.” Part of this is simple demographics: The Internet audience has expanded from its early adopters, who were more likely to be well-educated liberal intelligentsia, to the whole of Russia, which overwhelmingly supports Putin. Also, by working every day to spread Kremlin propaganda, the paid trolls have made it impossible for the normal Internet user to separate truth from fiction."

The piece repeats previous claims that Russia's industrial-grade propaganda apparatus has fixed its gaze upon the United States, and while so far some of these efforts on places like Facebook are so ham-fisted as to be comical, some of them are absolutely astounding in their scope and architecture. Like the Facebook group of Russian trolls that encourage followers to visit an art exhibit named "Material Evidence" hosted in Chelsea, New York City. The effort, funded by anonymous overseas donors, claims to show the "other side" of the Ukranian conflict and Syrian civil war not shown by Western media:

"Then there were the pictures from the Ukrainian revolution, which focused almost exclusively on the Right Sector, a small group of violent, right-wing, anti-Russian protesters with a fondness for black balaclavas. Russian authorities have seized upon Right Sector to paint the entire revolution, backed by a huge swath of Ukrainian society, as orchestrated by neo-fascist thugs. The show’s decision to juxtapose the rebellions in Syria and Ukraine was never clearly explained, perhaps because the only connection possible was that both targeted leaders supported by Russia. On the floor in front of many of the photos sat the actual items that appeared in them, displayed under glass cases. How, exactly, did organizers procure the very same battered motorcycle helmet that a Ukrainian protester wore in a photo while brawling with riot police? Who had fronted the money to purchase a mangled white van, supposedly used by Syrian rebels in a botched suicide bombing, and transport it to New York City?

Let that sink in for a second. Armies of fake U.S. Facebook accounts, sending followers to an entirely fake art exhibit in New York, promoted by an army of fake and hijacked Twitter accounts -- all of it tied to Russia's Internet Research Agency. At one point in his documentation efforts, Chen makes contact and meets up with a supposed Internet Research Agency employee and her brother, only to later discover the entire meeting is a staged photo op, later used by "news organizations" tied to Internet Research to discredit Chen as a neo nazi supporter. That story soon ballooned into a series of other Russian news stories accusing Chen of being BFFs with the NSA, CIA, and neo nazis, accompanied with snazzy videos to "prove" it.

So again, yes, most countries engage in propaganda. That's not really being disputed. Most Americans at this point are at least marginally aware of the propaganda used to sell recent wars conducted by the United States -- and the complicit behavior of the media in these efforts to this day stinks up the hallowed halls of most "respected" American news outlets (the same outlets that love to lecture bloggers on what news really is). But what Putin is up to is a propaganda war against the entire internet, and it makes dystopian visions by the likes of Orwell and Terry Gilliam look like Hardy Boy mysteries. Of course none of that matters because I'm clearly a Western imperialist puppy murderer, and this article was funded by the CIA, as commenters below will be sure to illustrate.

Filed Under: adrian chen, comments, propaganda, russia, social media, trolls, vladimir putin
Companies: internet research agency