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Wednesday, 28 February 2024

Troll Gardens: Every Activist group now gets Troll Training

 Troll Farms of all kinds are growing because they work, and people are willing to pay for information operations supporting their point of view. Exposing them  has only made them morph into less recognizable forms. with a central control group ands decentralized communicators, they are on both the Left and  Right and are active in this  2024 election-case. I propose an example group on each side, but there are many



Troll Farms now use a message control group, which analyzes communication momentary trends, develops a response strategy, and then farms the messages out to locally specific volunteers and bots to communicate the counter message.

Campaigns have always gathered supporters to help them communicate their message  Now every politically active groups may be beginning to use tools troll farm tactics with which to weaponize information.

  • Dis, Mis, and Mal information Amplification
  • Dis, Mis, and Mal information Suppression
  • Twists on real information
  • Tactics
    • Astroturfing
    • DARVO
    • Glorifying their candidate to
    • villainizing their opponent

Two Activist group case studies, both with their own troll farm networks, One Left and one Right 

On the Right

Turning Point USA, 

https://www.tpusa.com/

a non-profit political organization. Turning Point USA's  founder, Charlie Kirk, opened up the Republican National Convention this summer.  

TPUSA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote freedom.

  • Control Group: Web site and Headquarters
  • locally specific volunteers: Chapters of Student Groups across the country

On the Left

 ATI / Civic Listening Corps

Through our volunteer network, we operate campaigns to understand and combat misinformation and disinformation impacting our every aspect of our life. We coordinate with stakeholders across advocacy, academia, and journalism sectors to ensure insights are shared and accessible. We are actively monitoring problematic narratives online concerning elections and democracy, public health, climate, civil rights, and international conflict.


As we enter the 2024 election season there is more troll work than ever. I propose legislation that all groups clearly identify themselves in political information operations, and  information disfunction is documented and be subject to neutral part audit with a public release of reports, and violations fined,  since self regulation has not worked.

 

Harvest Articles about Troll Farms

https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/tech-gaming/almost-all-of-facebooks-top-christian-pages-are-run-by-foreign-troll-farms/

These groups, based largely in Kosovo and Macedonia, have been particularly successful when it comes to targeting American Christians. Though they split their efforts among multiple pages, they are mostly operated by the same groups. Collectively, their Christian Facebook pages reach about 75 million users a month — an audience 20 times the size of the next largest Christian Facebook page.

An in-depth look inside the Russian troll factory in St. Petersburg: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/world/europe/russia-troll-factory.html

Russian troll describes work in the troll factory: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/russian-troll-describes-work-infamous-misinformation-factory-n821486

A former Russian troll explains how trolls are taught to spread fake news: http://time.com/5168202/russia-troll-internet-research-agency/

A former Russian troll describes work in the troll factory as like being in Orwell’s world: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/17/a-former-russian-troll-speaks-it-was-like-being-in-orwells-world/

The activist who worked as a mole for Mueller and uncovered the troll farm in the Mueller indictment: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/some-russians-see-u-s-investigation-into-russian-election-meddling-as-a-soap-ope

The decent Russians working inside the troll factory trying to take it down: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-notorious-kremlin-linked-troll-farm-and-the-russians-trying-to-take-it-down/2017/10/06/c8c4b160-a919-11e7-9a98-07140d2eed02_story.html

Even many Russians can’t stand what the troll farm is doing according to The Moscow Times: https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/the-kremlins-trolls-go-west-35651

Outstanding three-part video series in the New York Times on Russian disinformation and the troll program, “Operation Infektion”: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html?auth=login-email&login=email&auth=login-email

US Internal Troll Farms Aimed Internally

 

RD: 2-28-24


 

Turning Point USA, 

https://www.tpusa.com/

a non-profit political organization. Turning Point USA's  founder, Charlie Kirk, opened up the Republican National Convention this summer.  

A Left Biased article  about them


Left Leaning Farms


The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) is a national, non-partisan research center on young people's civic engagement.

https://circle.tufts.edu/

Tufts

National Conference on Citizenship

National Conference On Citizenship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Conference_on_Citizenship

he NCoC to now operate under a Federal Charter. A Federal Charter is federal statue that establishes a co-operation between the government and organizations, agencies, or institutions. In 1953, the goal of the Congressional Charter was to empower “the NCoC to translate its ideals and objectives into realities. Plans for the future include both long-range and immediate projects and activates. The Conference will initiate and conduct some of these activities directly. Other, it will encourage and assist organizations and agencies in States and communities to initiate and carry on. ”There are approximately 1,478,000 non-profits in America—94 of them are chartered by Congress


The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) is a national, non-partisan research center on young people's civic engagement.

Research Date: 2-27-24

Civil Listening Corps (See Below) was Founded and is controlled by ATI ( See Below). This is a multi-tiered Troll Farm. This appears to be a network of left leaning companies, agencies, academics, non profits who monitor online communication, analyze trends and escalate "problem" traffic to educational content writers and social media network influencers to target specific demographic groups an d create a common counter message to the "problem" traffic.

Yes - this is a troll Farm that monitors troll Farms, But they track Trends they choose to:


NAFO

  a list of their "Problem" issue Trends was published monthly for a while


Civic Listening Corps

Through our volunteer network, we operate campaigns to understand and combat misinformation and disinformation impacting our every aspect of our life. We coordinate with stakeholders across advocacy, academia, and journalism sectors to ensure insights are shared and accessible. We are actively monitoring problematic narratives online concerning elections and democracy, public health, climate, civil rights, and international conflict.

https://www.civiclistening.org/


algorithmic Transparency Institute (ati )

https://ati.io/

Funders

  • Craig Newmark Philanthropies
  • Jampart Charitable Trust
  • Knight Foundation
  • Omidyar Network
  • National Conference on Citizenship
  • Reset.tech
  • Robert Pozen
  • Schmidt Futures
  • The Hopewell Fund
https://ati.io/funders/

Earlier work has been funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Luminate, The Brown Institute, and The Tow Center.

John Schmidt, Engagement Coordinator

John is the Engagement Coordinator for the Civic Listening Corps. He facilitates all of our volunteer events including guided listening shifts, training, and other opportunities for volunteers to combat misinformation.

Prior to his start at the Algorithmic Transparency Institute, John was a staff member of the Stopping Cyber Suppression program at Common Cause, where he trained volunteer social media monitors to identify democracy disinformation in their online networks and beyond, as well as how to use their personal social media platform to push back on disinformation narratives without amplifying them. 

John graduated summa cum laude from George Washington University with a B.A. in Political Science with a Public Policy Focus. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Myra Miranda, Partnerships Manager

Myra is the Partnerships Manager at ATI.  She is responsible for identifying, cultivating, and managing external relationships with partners that seek to engage in misinformation efforts that impact their work. As part of the Civic Listening Corps, Myra is responsible for recruiting and onboarding civil society organizations to incorporate their staff and volunteers into the program. 

Prior to joining ATI, Myra served as the California Civic Engagement Manager with NALEO Educational Fund, spearheading census, elections and COVID-19 campaigns to empower Latino communities. Previously, Myra assisted and led federal, state and local campaigns in key races since 2016. Myra graduated with a B.A. in political science from the University of California, Riverside. 

Kaitlyn Dowling, Senior Analyst

Kaitlyn is ATI’s Senior Analyst, working closely with other ATI staff to analyze content from our Civic Listening Corps volunteers and to elevate emerging misinformation narratives to our partners for action. Previously, Kaitlyn served as the Senior Editor in the Information Disorder Lab, housed in the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. In this role, she managed a team of researchers investigating and reporting on political mis- and disinformation spreading on the social web leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Kaitlyn has also worked with a variety of organizations in executing their communications strategies, including Harvard Law School and as Content Director of Women Online, a boutique digital PR and marketing firm. Kaitlyn graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in political science from the University of New Hampshire.

https://ati.io/


.io is a country-code top-level domain name (ccTLD) for the Chagos Archipelago, assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). However, it has become a generic domain and is popular in the tech world since IO or I/O means input/output in computer science

 

Common Cause

https://www.commoncause.org/

Among their other activities, fights election disinformation.  The use an Information Disorder Framework developed by the EU. they have an.int domain on their website

to register in the .int domain, the applicant must be an intergovernmental organization that meets the requirements found in RFC 1591. In brief, the .int domain is used for registering organizations established by international treaties between or among national governments

https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/voting-and-elections/stopping-cyber-suppression-and-voting-disinformation/


https://rm.coe.int/information-disorder-toward-an-interdisciplinary-framework-for-researc/168076277c