Troll farms have been uncovered in Russia and China where anonymous government employees sit behind computer screens and attempt to influence public opinion through online posting. They also attack and criticize anyone expressing views considered hostile to their own. Hundreds of employees can work at these farms. However it's not just Russia and China. According to the Wikipedia page, Russian web brigades, a number of countries are involved in the exact same practice: In the following CNN report you can actually see inside a Russian troll farm: Inside look at a Russian troll farm
Obviously, what will be of greatest interest to most, will be how this works through one's own government. Akin to that idea, will be the possibility that a member on this site could be one of those government, "trolls." I am guessing, though, that the wikipedia article on Russian web brigades, does not go into the specifics of the public opinion swaying work, done online by employees of the U.S. government?
Indeed. And what's controversial is that taxpayer's money is being spent on influencing the same taxpayer's opinions. Should this be acceptable in a democracy? It's estimated China has between 300,000 and 2 million online trolls. See: Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges
I personally can't believe the quoted numbers of online trolls in China is so high. Tens of thousands would be a high figure, but hundreds of thousands? That would represent a massive investment. The Snowden leaks back in 2014 revealed that the UK's GCHQ had developed, or at least were in the process of developing, hacker technology to put automated posts on social media. Would this mean that some of the online trolls are actually robots if the posts in question are "automated"? I've heard it's possible to have a conversation with a robot these days over the phone when phoning certain numbers and often it's difficult to tell the difference from an actual human operator.
Adding to the above point, here's a quote from the Guardian newspaper back in 2018 on how good robot call centres are: Rise of robots threatens to terminate the UK call-centre workforce
Saw this book written by Philip N. Howard, a Professor at Oxford, but I've not actually read it myself: Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives Here's the synopsis which details robot accounts on social media:
