Tina Urso went to bed on April 21 pleased with the small protest she helped organize in London around the visit of Malta’s prime minister. She wanted to call attention to the country’s unusual practice of selling passports to foreigners and the money laundering it has engendered. By the time she woke up, her Facebook feed was deluged with threats of violence and misogynist insults, including the false charge that she ran an escort service. Researchers concluded the attacks were coordinated through private Facebook groups administered by government employees and officials of Malta’s ruling Labour Party. Participants would eventually publish her parents’ address, as well as her confidential National ID card number. "My Facebook account was flooded with notifications, people sharing everything about me, manipulating photos taken from my profile," Urso said. "It was just insane what they were able to do in just a few hours."
Tina Urso went to bed on April 21 pleased with the small protest she helped organize in London around the visit of Malta’s prime minister. She wanted to call attention to the country’s unusual practice of selling passports to foreigners and the money laundering it has engendered. By the time she woke up, her Facebook feed was deluged with threats of violence and misogynist insults, including the false charge that she ran an escort service. Researchers concluded the attacks were coordinated through private Facebook groups administered by government employees and officials of Malta’s ruling Labour Party. Participants would eventually publish her parents’ address, as well as her confidential National ID card number. "My Facebook account was flooded with notifications, people sharing everything about me, manipulating photos taken from my profile," Urso said. "It was just insane what they were able to do in just a few hours."
ARGENTINA
President Mauricio Macri's administration is reported to have its own "troll army" – a team of digital strategists operating a network of fake accounts on social media that target opponents and praise the government. A Macri spokesman has denied the government uses trolls.AUSTRIA
Journalists, particularly young women, have faced well-organized campaigns on social media involving abusive language and threats of violence. Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party, singled out individual journalists for abuse, a study by the International Press Institute found.AZERBAIJAN
Tens of thousands of citizens were taught how to use Twitter and Facebook, and a government-connected youth group built hundreds of websites and blogs designed to push the "Azerbaijani truth," which included smearing government opponents. "They were basically training people to do these acts of trolling," said Katy Pearce, a professor at the University of Washington.BAHRAIN
During an uprising against the Bahrain monarchy in 2011, one government-backed Twitter account was dedicated to "mass identity-revealing and doxing" of critics, according to the Institute for the Future report.CHINA
The nation's "50 Cent" army of more than 2 million people posts nearly 450 million fake comments a year, part of a massive operation "to distract the public," according to a Harvard study. In one case, French journalist Ursula Gauthier was attacked in a state-run publication for a piece critical of the treatment of Uighurs, a Muslim minority; officials cited those comments to not renew her visa.ECUADOR
Government-funded trolls worked with the country's intelligence agency to target critics, documents suggest. A prominent lawyer had his Twitter account hacked after posting a video critical of then-President Rafael Correa, then found his front door splashed in red paint along with photographs suggesting he was being followed.ETHIOPIA
Ethiopian government allegedly paid government employees to pose as online commenters as a way to target opponents and reinforce the government narrative. These paid commenters are sometimes called "cocas" – or "contemptible cadres" in Amharic.INDIA
In her book I Am a Troll, Indian journalist Swati Chaturvedi documents how the country's ruling party, the BJP, allegedly created its 'IT Cell' to smear and threaten opponents online. She says the cell frequently targets women and that it directed a campaign against NDTV reporter Barkha Dutt that included repeated rape and death threats.MALTA
Private Facebook groups that include top members of the governing Labor Party coordinated online attacks against anti-corruption activists and journalists, according to researchers who investigated the groups following the car-bombing murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.MEXICO
Paid trolls have targeted journalists, activists and political opponents with violent death threats and smear campaigns. Automated accounts, dubbed Peñabots after Mexico's outgoing president, are used for "hashtag poisoning," a technique designed to mislead activists and protesters who use social media to coordinate action.PHILIPPINES
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte cultivated a cult following online during his 2016 campaign, then used social media platforms to harass opponents once in power. Journalist Maria Ressa became the victim of state-sponsored trolling after investigating how the government uses social media to shape public opinion and target opponents. Her media company is currently being investigated by the government for potentially violating restrictions against foreign ownership.RUSSIA
A birthplace of information warfare, Russia has mastered the use of social media for so-called "influence operations" and been a key exporter of the tactics. Operators of a troll factory were indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller this year, for among other things creating hundreds of fake social media accounts to spread conspiracy theories and inflame U.S. political divisions.SAUDI ARABIA
Researcher Marc Owen Jones of Exeter University identified what he called a large network of fake Twitter accounts that amplified government attacks on regional rivals and internal dissidents. Owen found that the accounts appear to be controlled via custom software that he traced to an Egyptian software programmer.SOUTH KOREA
The country's National Intelligence Service has admitted using assets of its psychological operations division to intervene in the 2012 presidential election. The effort included as many as 30 teams that were responsible for "spreading pro-government opinions and suppressing anti-government views" online, according to findings from an NIS internal investigation.TURKEY
Online trolls have been an effective force in conjunction with President Recep Erdogan's crackdown on independent journalists and secular activists. Can Dundar, former editor in chief of the influential daily Cumhuriyet, fled to Germany after a trolling campaign and failed assassination attempt. Women journalists working for both international and Turkish outlets also have been targets.UNITED STATES
The Institute for the Future cited the U.S. as an example of "state incited" trolling, "in which the government maintains an arm's length distance from the attack," but uses proxies to signal state support for it. For instance, it noted President Trump referring to journalists as "enem[ies] of the people" – a message that many supporters took up on social media.VIETNAM
Vietnam: it has at least 10,000 "cyber troops" that police "wrongful views" on social media as part of its ongoing information war.VENEZUELA
Plans for a ‘Venezuelan troll army’ were outlined in a leaked document from the Interior Ministry. It says each platoon would be made up of 10 people controlling 50 Instagram accounts, 50 Facebook accounts and 100 Twitter accounts. It also calls for offensive command posts situated in ‘comfortable work spaces.’Mahaveer Prasad Khileri, a former troll for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, at his home in Jogaliya, India in May 2018. Source: Bibhudatta Pradhan of Bloomberg News
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The government assists people in opening social media accounts through “Candanga Points”—kiosks set up in town squares—part of an effort announced in 2017 to create digital militiamen, according to the Institute for the Future's report. The Ministry of Communications distributes memes, hashtags and trolling targets via dedicated channels on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, according to Marianne Diaz, a Venezuelan researcher. Among the targets have been Lorenzo Mendoza, a government critic and president of Empresas Polar, a food distribution company, that trolls sought to blame for chronic food shortages. Diaz said the kiosks are managed by the same local committees that determine who gets access to food coupons, effectively motivating people to troll for food in a devastated economy with rampant malnutrition.
The government assists people in opening social media accounts through “Candanga Points”—kiosks set up in town squares—part of an effort announced in 2017 to create digital militiamen, according to the Institute for the Future's report. The Ministry of Communications distributes memes, hashtags and trolling targets via dedicated channels on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, according to Marianne Diaz, a Venezuelan researcher. Among the targets have been Lorenzo Mendoza, a government critic and president of Empresas Polar, a food distribution company, that trolls sought to blame for chronic food shortages. Diaz said the kiosks are managed by the same local committees that determine who gets access to food coupons, effectively motivating people to troll for food in a devastated economy with rampant malnutrition.
A picture of Kurdish journalist Nedim Turfent posted by a Twitter user after his arrest in May 2016, with a message saying, the “bastard was arrested!”. Source: Twitter
A picture of Kurdish journalist Nedim Turfent posted by a Twitter user after his arrest in May 2016, with a message saying, the “bastard was arrested!”. Source: Twitter
Martha Roldos, the daughter of the nation’s first democratically elected president, is no stranger to political mysteries: Almost four decades after her father died in a 1981 plane crash, Ecuadoreans still speculate about who was responsible. On Jan. 6, 2014, Roldos herself was targeted by what was then a new and mysterious form of attack. Her private emails were stolen by hackers, then published on the front page of a pro-government newspaper. Those communications were spread by government-controlled social media accounts, which also smeared and threatened her. Roldos, who runs an investigative journalism project in Ecuador called Mil Hojas, eventually helped piece together evidence showing that the government of President Rafael Correa had built and funded the secret troll operation that attacked her and also targeted hundreds of others.
Martha Roldos, the daughter of the nation’s first democratically elected president, is no stranger to political mysteries: Almost four decades after her father died in a 1981 plane crash, Ecuadoreans still speculate about who was responsible. On Jan. 6, 2014, Roldos herself was targeted by what was then a new and mysterious form of attack. Her private emails were stolen by hackers, then published on the front page of a pro-government newspaper. Those communications were spread by government-controlled social media accounts, which also smeared and threatened her. Roldos, who runs an investigative journalism project in Ecuador called Mil Hojas, eventually helped piece together evidence showing that the government of President Rafael Correa had built and funded the secret troll operation that attacked her and also targeted hundreds of others.
This meme, replacing the image of Jesus Christ next to Pontius Pilate with that of Daphne Caruana Galizia, was posted a few weeks before the journalist's assassination on Oct. 16, 2017. Source: Private Facebook group
This meme, replacing the image of Jesus Christ next to Pontius Pilate with that of Daphne Caruana Galizia, was posted a few weeks before the journalist's assassination on Oct. 16, 2017. Source: Private Facebook group