In today's #vatnik soup I'll continue talking about troll farms and social media manipulation, extending the topic to other social media platforms, too.
Our social media space is constantly manipulated by paid actors whose goal is to control the online narratives.
1/10
Most (if not all)social media platforms are saying they are effectively fighting against fake accounts & bots. This is not true:fake account industry is blooming & it's also a very lucrative business.Changes made on these platforms have not changed the manipulation industry. 2/10
From the big social media sites, (pre-Musk) Twitter is actually the best at rooting out the fake accounts, with VKontakte coming close 2nd.Even if you'd think otherwise based on the news, FB, IG, TikTok and YouTube are quite terrible at this and have a massive troll problem. 3/10
It is usually cheapest to buy automated manipulation, such as views and likes. Buying meaningful content like comments is many times more expensive.
Comments are usually written by actual people and often in English, requiring a wider skill set from the manipulator.
4/10
Manipulation is getting much faster, meaning that these troll farms have become much more effective in their work. After an hour after your purchase, 20 % of the manipulation has already been conducted. This means that the networks are huge and responsive to their tasks.
5/10
The scale of social media manipulation is incomprehensible: alone in Q3 of 2021 on all social media sites combined, more than 22 billion fake engagements or accounts were detected and removed, and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
6/10
Fully automated bots are still available, but their lifespan is usually quite short. For a few hundred euros, you can get some human touch with an influencer can spread your cause for years. They'll even engage in online fights to defend your ideas.
7/10
Many of the troll farms do business out in the open - the marketplace is easily accessible and requires very little effort to find - just try it on Google or any other search engine. Running troll farm in a developing country can provide income for thousands of people.
8/10
To conclude: whatever Musk and his friends are telling you, Twitter was and has been the most effective platform at countering manipulation. In Stratcom's research, 90% of manipulation accounts purchased were removed from the platform.
9/10
This will of course be affected, now that Musk fired most of the staff responsible for fighting the manipulation.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll explain the Alaska Fiasco and how it marks the peak of Trump’s two-year betrayal of Ukraine. What was sold as “peace talks” turned into a spectacle of weakness, humiliation, empty promises, and photo-ops that handed Putin exactly what he wanted.
1/24
Let’s start with the obvious: Trump desperately wants the gold medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, mainly because Obama got one. That’s why he’s now LARPing as a “peace maker” in every conflict: Israel-Gaza, Azerbaijan-Armenia, India-Pakistan, and of course Ukraine-Russia.
2/24
Another theory is that Putin holds kompromat — compromising material such as videos or documents — that would put Trump in an extremely bad light. Some have suggested it could be tied to the Epstein files or Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about engagement farming: a cynical social media tactic to rack up likes, shares, and comments. From rage farming to AI-powered outrage factories, engagement farming is reshaping online discourse and turning division into profit.
1/23
Engagement farming is a social media tactic aimed at getting maximum likes, shares, and comments, with truth being optional. It thrives on provocative texts, images, or videos designed to spark strong reactions, boost reach, and turn online outrage into clicks and cash.
2/23
One subset of engagement farming is rage farming: a tactic built to provoke strong negative emotions through outrageous or inflammatory claims. By triggering anger or moral outrage, these posts often generate 100s or even 1,000s of heated comments, amplifying their reach.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll cover the autocratic concept of “Good Tsar, Bad Boyars”: the idea that the leader is wise and just, but constantly sabotaged by corrupt advisors. This narrative shields the ruler from blame, and it’s used by both Putin and Trump today.
1/20
The phrase “Good Tsar, Bad Boyars” (Царь хороший, бояре плохие), also known as Naïve Monarchism, refers to a long-standing idea in Russian political culture: the ruler is good and benevolent, but his advisors are corrupt, incompetent and responsible for all failures.
2/20
From this perception, any positive action taken by the government is viewed as being an accomplishment of the benevolent leader, whereas any negative one is viewed as being caused by lower-level bureaucrats or “boyars”, without the approval of the leader.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian politician and First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia, Sergey Kiriyenko. He’s best known for running both domestic and foreign disinformation and propaganda operations for the Kremlin.
1/20
On paper, and in photos, Kiriyenko is just as boring as most of the Kremlin’s “political technologists”: between 2005-2016 he headed the Rosatom nuclear energy company, but later played a leading role in the governance of Russia-occupied territories in Ukraine.
2/20
What is a political technologist? In Russia, they’re spin doctors & propaganda architects who shape opinion, control narratives, and manage elections — often by faking opposition, staging events, and spreading disinfo to maintain Putin’s power and the illusion of democracy.
Let me show you how a Pakistani (or Indian, they're usually the same) AI slop farm/scam operates. The account @designbonsay is a prime example: a relatively attractive, AI-generated profile picture and a ChatGPT-style profile description are the first red flags.
1/5
The profile's posts are just generic engagement farming, usually using AI-generated photos of celebrities or relatively attractive women.
These posts are often emotionally loaded and ask the user to interact with them ("like and share if you agree!").
2/5
Then there's the monetization part. This particular account sells "pencil art", which again are just AI-generated slop.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American lawyer and politician, Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee). He’s best-known for opposing the aid to Ukraine, undermining NATO by calling the US to withdraw from the alliance, and for fighting with a bunch of braindead dogs online.
1/21
Like many of the most vile vatniks out there, “Based Mike” is a lawyer by profession. He hails from the holy land of Mormons, Utah, where he faces little political competition, allowing him to make the most outrageous claims online without risking his Senate seat.
2/21
Before becoming a senator, Mike fought to let a nuclear waste company dump Italian radioactive waste in Utah, arguing it was fine if they just diluted it. The state said no, the public revolted, and the courts told poor Mikey to sit down.