How do you know you’ve made it to the big time as a blogger? One metric is whether you have become a the target of Russian trolls. Understanding the process how trolls work to first gain your trust and then use their access to your site for nefarious purposes is important. As a public service, I am sharing this latest example of an attempted troll invasion of Deprograming101 to warn others who currently write, or are considering starting, their own blogs.
For amateur bloggers, WordPress is the platform of choice primarily for its ease of use. However, it also includes some excellent features for blocking comments which do not mesh with the blog’s purpose or goals. For example, trusted commenters, once approved, can post additional feedback without the blog administrator reviewing each individual message. Therefore, by gaining trusted status, a troll can then start posting disinformation, provocative comments and links to other sites.
Below is an example, which arrived this morning. The modus operandi employed by this troll is pretty standard. Flatter the author; so he/she will approve the submission.
It’s actually a nice and helpful piece of info.
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Please stay us informed like this. Thanks for sharing. https://steepster.com/Jimgriffin
I use this example because it raises so many “red flags.” First, it makes no specific reference to the content of the post which precipitated the comment, in this case Wednesday’s article titled, “Tell Me Something You Don’t Know.” Second, and most obvious, are the grammatical errors. “Please stay us informed…” Clearly, an incorrect translation of the troll’s native language.
However, the third flag is the most clever and demonstrates the effort trolls put into their work and the training they receive. This troll associates himself/herself with a legitimate site: www. steepster.com. The bloggers describe their site as follows.
Three dudes in New York City built this site as a way of keeping track of the teas they were drinking. Since then, it’s turned into one of the liveliest tea communities on the Web.
Why choose a tea community when evidence suggests most of the trolls and bots during the 2016 election established false identities on sites such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook? Because these more generic sites with significant cyber-security resources have started to develop algorithms to identify and block this kind of content. In other words, using sites like www.steepster.com is a trend to counter efforts by the major social media players to crack down on diabolical on-line activity.
To recap, the process consists of the following steps. (1) Establish a presence on a legitimate social media site. (2) Identify a blog on which to spread disinformation and foment division. (3) Flatter the blogger to gain trusted status. (4) Flood the site with false stories and comments to incite chaos and dissension.
CAVEAT BLOG-GOR! And BLOG-GEE!
POSTSCRIPT
For those of you who are more interested in first-rate journalism versus gossip, I strongly recommend Russian Roulette by David Corn (Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones) and Michael Isikoff (chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo! News) over books such as Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. Corn and Isikoff document interactions between Russia and sequentially the Trump Organization, Trump campaign and the White House beginning with the first time Trump, during the 2013 Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas, meets Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, his son Emin and British publicist Rob Goldstone. If those names sound familiar, it is because Emin Agalarov and Goldstone were among the attendees at the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.
As I read the book, I felt the same way I did watching Jordan Peele’s Get Out. It is hard to characterize the book as falling into a single genre. It is a spy novel. It is a love story years in the making. It is a political thriller. It is a Shakespearean tragedy. But most importantly, it is a must read.
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP
I thought I was missing something regarding using the word (US) until I read your comment that it was their fault with the translation from Russian .
I will as soon as I can buy the book by Corn & Isikoff. I heard their interview yesterday on MSNBC discussing their new book. I am a follower of the three.. Thank you.
Very informative. While the media/technology that trolls use to gain access is new, their behavior not so much. From Shakespeare in Julius Caesar:
Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy:
Hide it in smiles and affability.
Thanks! And continue to stay us informed.