The industrial assembly line for turning lies into reality
In short: Imagine a factory where the raw material is falsehood and the finished product is public opinion. The Internet Research Agency operated as a literal industrial assembly line for disinformation. This Russian organization employed hundreds of workers to flood social networks with coordinated propaganda, aiming to manipulate political outcomes across the globe.
The Internet Research Agency (IRA), also known as Glavset or the "Trolls from Olgino," was a Russian company in Saint Petersburg that functioned as a professional troll farm. Linked to oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, the organisation conducted online propaganda for Russian interests. At its peak in 2015, it reportedly employed over 1,000 people in a single building to influence domestic and foreign policy, including the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum.
The operation was industrial in scale. Employees had specific quotas: bloggers produced ten posts per shift (at least 750 characters each), while commenters were tasked with 126 comments and two posts per account. Working shifts sometimes lasting 12 hours, they flooded social networks and video hosting services. Workers likened the workplace to George Orwell's 1984, claiming they were compelled to produce falsehoods on a manufacturing belt.
The agency used sophisticated infrastructure, including "Prisma" terminals, which could track nearly 60 million sites in near real-time with a 2–3% error rate. The IRA leveraged these to erode trust in Western institutions, praise Vladimir Putin, and criticise Alexei Navalny. Although officially shut down in July 2023 following the Wagner Group rebellion, its legacy persists in the term "Trolls from Olgino," denoting any troll spreading pro-Russian propaganda.
The IRA's influence was not limited to social media posts; it also involved coordinated harassment and disinformation campaigns. For instance, Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro was targeted by an organized campaign of hate and harassment for reporting on pro-Russian trolling. The organization's tactics were often consistent with content disseminated by RT, using technical points to showcase specific politicians as incompetent or to sow division in foreign countries like France, Poland, and Germany.
The agency's history is marked by several relocations in Saint Petersburg, moving from a white cottage in Olgino in 2013 to Savushkina Street in 2014, and finally to the Lakhta-2 business center in 2018. Despite its clandestine nature, its existence was revealed through a mix of whistleblower interviews, hacker leaks, and investigative journalism. The organization's work was funded through various means, including schemes allegedly intended to plunder the federal budget, with salaries for employees ranging from approximately 25,000 to 80,000 Russian rubles depending on bonuses and hours worked.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Internet Research Agency
- Also: www.britannica.com — Internet Research Agency | Russian company | Britannica
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