A new sport is out for the most notorious Russian internet trolls as they launched a brand new website that actually hired real-life freelance journalists to contribute to their website. Facebook announced this on Tuesday with a shocking reveal that the hired journalists also included Americans.
The site is known as Peace Data and was launched just this year specifically targeting the environment and political and corporate corruption. This was learned by Facebook through a small tip from the FBI itself that people who were formerly associated with the previous Russian Internet Research Agency ran Peace Data.
Who were the Russian internet trolls?
The tip involved revealing that the Russian internet trolls previously created quite a number of significant influential Facebook and Twitter personas to spark political tensions during the 2016 election. These were the people running Peace Data and they have already taken down most of its known affiliated accounts.
According to the head of the company's cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, it is confirmed that the Russians are trying to target the 2020 elections as well as public debates in the US and they are getting quite creative. Despite the threats, Nathaniel Gleicher ended his statement saying he thinks that it is not that effective due to A, they would still get caught, and also B, when running a somewhat subtle influence campaign, you're actually working at cross-purposes with yourself.
BREAKING: Facebook removes network of fake Russian accounts. #MTPDaily@KenDilanianNBC: "The bad news is the (Russian) internet research agency is still alive and well ... The good news is they caught this early based on an FBI tip." pic.twitter.com/10KEpuEMLb — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) September 1, 2020
Facebook and Twitter Involvement
Although the website was not able to get public attention right away, they slowly started to shift into posting their content on left-wing pages in order to gain a following. The Russian editor would post on multiple left-wing support in order to gain more visibility for the articles written that were sometimes legit and sometimes mixed with propaganda.
Once Facebook and Twitter caught whiff of this plan, they started to actively do something about this. Twitter has already banned five accounts with relations to Peace Data calling them "Russian state actors" while Facebook, on the other hand, has also been helping with not just stopping the act but also tracking them.
The American journalist
The American journalist who apparently wrote several articles just for this site said that he was actually unaware that the whole website was backed by Russians and that it was quite hard for him to turn down this paid work during an era when a lot of journalists are struggling to find work.
According to the journalist, they messaged him on Twitter offering $200 per article. The journalist then expounded and explained that he has lost his job during the whole COVID and was already pretty desperate to try to earn money just enough to pay for rent.
The journalist has already written several stories for Peace Data and due to the reputation of the journalist, the site began to attract attention and grow the website. Having an authentic journalist on board has helped the site grow.
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Legit reporters, but what about the editors?
Peace Data previously recruited journalists on this sort of freelance networking website Guru. It obviously did not mention any connection to the Russian government but somehow made a specific call for writers that are capable of writing some controversial topics including corruption, anti-war, abuse of power, even human rights violations, and others alike.
Although some of the freelance Peace Data's journalists were actually real reporters, some of its known "editors" were just personas with vague profile pictures that were deepfakes, or just algorithmically generated. One persona 'Alex Lacusta' tried sharing stories from the site to a couple of left-leaning groups on Facebook. This was according to Lee Foster, the senior manager of the information operations for Mandiant, a cybersecurity company that also tracked down the website.
