Someone I follow about Ukraine is showing a good video about Russian internet trolls,
yes this is very accurate. multiple people post under the same accounts, they ignore any context of the discussion. they are paid for engagement so they are vested in starting flame wars. ive only paid attention to research on bots that operate in russian language, but anecdotally on twitter over the years ive seen obviously russian bots in spanish, arabic, english and ukrainian too, and im actually unsure behind the logistics for some of them or perhaps another state employs similar actors, though they were hardlining support for russia.
when the sikh leader in canada was assassinated a lot of people i follow who reported on it got flooded with seemingly botted responses mocking the posters and the victim, though i dont follow any mainstream social media anymore and havent interacted with them since. interestingly, first russian and chinese bots were sighted in early 2000s apparently
also i doubt they are paid well, its just office drones with no credentials
they are paid for engagement so they are vested in starting flame wars.
Good. Yet another reason to ignore them.
