Troll Army

There are ordinary trolls. They have fun in the comments to the news and articles, entertain people and enrich the discussion with emotions, often sweet and harmless. They are on their own and act in their own interests. And there are others who stand under the flags of unknown forces, they are attracted by the brilliance of gold, they are merciless and ready to destroy everything in their path. Their whole horde ... element controlled by other people's interests.


The following discussion focuses on the trolls acting in the interests of others, and most often in the interests of states. Their goal is to throw dust in the eyes and form a false public opinion on acute events. Such trolling is developing in many countries. In the article Bloomberg Russia is called the master of sports in this business, the key exporter of this tactic and the birthplace of trolling.
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Under the cut, the features of Russian trolls and their digital footprint on the Twitter platform

Trolling is an effective tool of influence, control and deterrence. Therefore, its use is increasing and social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, ...) intensify the fight against disinformation from fake accounts. And this is another direction and a great opportunity for analysts and datasainists to use their skills to make the information world a little cleaner. It would be cool to highlight troll accounts. Pressed the button and all their comments / posts disappear, beauty)

Twitter has deleted thousands of Russian trolls accounts and millions of tweets. Chua Chin Hon analyzed this data, revealed traces of Russian troll accounts and built models for their detection. Article Using Data Scince to identify government trolls on Twitter . He compared the popular real and Russian troll accounts. Basic heuristics:

• The main troll accounts were created in 2014, in May and August
• The peak of activity is in 2015-2016. If you look at November 2016 (the presidential election of the United States), a large activity falls on the 8th and 9th, on election day
• Troll accounts have a low following-to-follower ratio, i.e. Subscribed to a large number of users, and they are tracked a little. For comparison:
  
  
• Popular real accounts. Number of subscribers and signatories:
  
  
• Popular troll accounts. Number of subscribers and signatories:
  
  
  
  The number of tracked accounts is striking. 1000 tracked accounts are already busting for real users
• Troll accounts prefer hashtags instead of links:
  
  
• Shorter tweets and fewer words. Real accounts try to use the maximum number of characters allowed:
  
  
• Troll accounts in the location indicate those cities and countries where the audience they want to influence live. In this case, the United States
• t-SNE submission of tweets from 10 troll and real accounts:
  
  
• Troll accounts are disguised as news agencies and news sources. They release content that users in the region prefer and mix in the “correct” information.
• Another common feature of Russian trolls who pretend to be English-speaking is the confusion in the use of "a" / "the" and the grammatically incorrect formulation of the question (the word order is changing)

In general, it is difficult to identify a troll, there is no clear separation of the border, they are cunning and change behavior. In each country, on each platform, this is a new story. If you are a troll, have detected trolls, have suffered or have dealt with trolls, share your experience. What to look for, how to identify? Any ideas?

Articles on:

• A Bloomberg article with many examples in different countries: A Global Guide to Government-Trolled Trolls
• Using Data Scince to identify government trolls on Twitter
• How to identify the Russian troll