"Trolls" in the capital Podil, or Whose activity was stopped by the Facebook company

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On September 16, the Facebook company announced that it had discovered a "troll factory" in Ukraine and deleted the accounts associated with it. Among them were the pages of the Znaj.ua, Politeka and Hyser sites, which position themselves as mass media. However , according to the Institute of Mass Information, which investigates compliance with journalistic standards, they often spread manipulation and false information.

Nathaniel Gleicher, responsible for the cyber security policy at Facebook, writes that the Kyiv company Pragmatico was involved in the promotion of these pages. She spent about $1.6 million on advertising on Facebook and Instagram (or UAH 39.5 million — a considerable amount by Ukrainian standards, - Author), attracting more than 4 million followers.

In addition, according to Gleicher, both pages and groups were managed by fake accounts whose names were constantly changing: "Their owners and administrators posted information about celebrities, show business, sports, local and international news, political and economic issues, including Ukrainian elections, political candidates and criticism of various public figures".

Facebook has released several examples of content shared by these accounts.

A sample of the content posted on some of these pages

Ukrainian "troll factory": what is known and how did it work?

Specialists of the independent research laboratory of digital forensics DFRLab (a project of the Atlantic Council think tank) conducted their own investigation: on September 16, 2019, Facebook blocked 149 pages for participating in "coordinated inauthentic behavior". DFRLab investigated 121 pages, 64 of which belonged to five media that are part of the Znay Media holding: Znaj.ua, Politeka.net, Akcenty, Hyser, and Clutch.ua. Facebook discovered Znay's connection with PR company Pragmatiko. DFRLab researcher Roman Osadchuk told about this in an exclusive comment to Ukrinform.

Roman Osadchuk

Osadchuk : "The page with this name was among the investigated pages. In one of the videos published on the page, a phone number was found that was used in the presentation of another Doping Digital Agency, which in turn claims to own the resources of Know, Politheka, and Clutch. DFRLab established that 37 Znaj.ua and Politeka pages from the entire array were created on December 22, 2018. This is about a third of all analyzed pages. Most of the pages created on this day did not contain publications. Of the 18 Politeka pages created that day, 12 had no publications. From 19 pages Know. UA - 16 did not contain any publication. Analysis in the CrowdTangle tool showed spikes in the number of subscribers around similar dates for the pages of Politeka and Znaj.ua. Thus, the pages of Politeka and Znaj of the city of Kropyvnytskyi, which were registered on December 22, 2018, received more than 600 subscribers in the period from December 30 to January 5. Other key spikes were recorded in late April to early May and late August to early September, when pages received between 30% and 80% increase in followers. Coincidence in dates for two independent pages may indicate possible coordination.”

In addition, Mr. Osadchuk added that the external domains of the Znaj.ua and Politeka.net websites are hosted on the same server and have the same IP addresses.

As for Pragmatico, there is almost no information about this company on the web. The Facebook page and official website are not available. Although such an agency still exists. For example, on the website Work.ua it is stated that the company is engaged in the creation and promotion of personal corporate brands, it employs from 10 to 50 employees.

And the article "PR during the war" is posted on the Politeka website, the author of which is identified as Valery Savchuk, director of the Pragmatico agency. In addition, in one of the resumes on the Jobs.ua website, the job seeker indicated that until August 2019 he worked as a political PR manager in social networks at Pragmatico. The resume says that in this position he was involved in media image formation, creating a positive image and maintaining the customer's reputation in social networks, as well as that he managed a "team of 10 people." But that's not all. LIGA.net journalists managed to talk to a girl who was interviewed at Pragmatico in 2018. According to her, the company was engaged in political PR and promotion of politicians on FB, at that time it had several offices near the Palace of Sport metro station and a large SMM department. The girl provided the contacts of several company managers, but they said: "They have never heard of Pragmatico and have never worked there..."

In turn, Ukrinform took a comment from Odesa blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko , who back in July of this year (at the height of the parliamentary campaign) published a post on his Facebook page mentioning a certain PR company (the blogger did not specify the name, but in a conversation with a journalist did not deny that it was about Pragmatico - see below). According to him, the office of this "office" is allegedly located in the Podol region of the capital.

Oleksandr Kovalenko

"The members of the so-called troll groups are young people in their 20s and 30s. They work in three shifts. Each (shift) has 10 people. The monthly salary of one troll is about 9 thousand hryvnias. The norm for a day shift is 300 comments, for a night shift - 200", - says Kovalenko, - At the entrance to the office - there is a security guard who takes phones and other means of photo, video and audio recording from outsiders."

Photo from Oleksandr Kovalenko's post

When asked why he mentions Podil in his post, the blogger answered: "Why not? There is a wide selection of office space in any price category, and thanks to a large number of educational institutions, there is easy access to a potential workforce. Shift work allowed even inpatient students to join the work. Of course, I will not name the sources of information. But these people are related to the mentioned company - they worked there."

Somewhat similar to "trolls from Olgino", but no more

According to Oleksandr Kovalenko, this factory did not actually perform any openly anti-Ukrainian tasks. "Strana.UA and their YouTube with an armada of trolls do many times more work to discredit Ukraine than those we are talking about. Basically, this factory worked, let's say, on itself. Political orders to discredit candidates were carried out . Moreover, from completely different persons who radically differ from each other in the vector of their political activity. Of course, like any "troll-generator", it harmed the country's information environment, especially in the midst of an election campaign . But to compare them with the "Holgino trolls"... This would rather be flattery towards them than the truth," the blogger convinces.

It is possible that it is so. However, there is a noticeable "tiny" similarity (underlined and highlighted in bold) with the "trolls" of Yevgeny Prigozhin ("Putin's cook").

At the end of February last year, diplomat, expert of the Russian Research Center Serhii Borshchevskyi wrote in an author's material for Ukrinform entitled "Russian "ichtamnets" on the Internet: the scale is impressive" wrote : "...since the beginning of 2014, employees of the "factory" pretending to be Americans , through social networks spread false information directed against some candidates (...) the "strategic goal" of this company was to introduce destabilizing divisions into the US political system."

The similarity can also be traced in the organizational structure. In the article of the Spanish-language online edition of ABC Internacional (ABC, dated November 20, 2017) entitled "Fake news: the Russian "troll factory" that works "24 hours a day" ( La "granja de trolls" rusos que trabaja las 24 horas del día ), which was translated into Ukrainian by Serhii Borshchevskyi, mentions a boy named Vitaly Bespalov, who came to work as an editor at the St. Petersburg media organization "Internet Research Agency".

ABC Internacional : “The place of work is located in building No. 55 on Savushkin Street in St. Petersburg and is popularly known as the "troll factory." Vitaliy Bespalov became another regular in the production, which functions 24 hours a day (the shift mode was also mentioned by an Odessa blogger) , with a lunch break of 30 minutes... The number of trolls at the "factory", according to various former employees, varies between 400 and 1,000 people placed on different impenetrable (which do not communicate with each other) floors. According to Bespalov, the employees are young people aged 25-30 years (the same age of Pragmatico employees is 20-30 years old) , mostly women."

Znaj.ua and Politeka about blocking on Facebook: "We are not bots or trolls. We are living people"

Meanwhile, the sites Znaj.u aand Politeka.net reject accusations of using fake pages and say that politicians want to limit freedom of speech through the most famous social network.

Znaj.ua : "The entire Znaj.ua team can confirm their identities, have passports and a completely physical, not imaginary, form (...) We insist on restoring the operation of our page. It is very unfortunate to assume that a world-renowned company could become a victim of manipulation by the political forces of Ukraine, which seek to silence well-known media that criticize their activities."

Politeka.net : "The Politeka.net team consists of journalists and programmers, SEO experts and content managers, this is a huge team of people, each of whom can confirm his identity. Prove that he is not a troll or a bot. We, living people, who have been creating news content for the same people — flesh and blood — 24 hours a day for three years now. We're working to restore subscription access to millions of our readers, and to restore our employees to accounts that were once built with great trust and respect for the Facebook team. We believe that the world-famous company will not follow the lead of the political forces of Ukraine, who dream of silencing the well-known media, closing the eyes and ears of readers."

Journalists of " Ukrainian Pravda " analyzed the statements of both sites and found that they are similar in content and form, and individual phrases are formulated almost identically. Yes, both resources wrote that their pages could be deleted due to the fact that "different political groups" were conducting "information wars" there. The sites also admitted that they cooperated with PR agency Pragmatico, with which Facebook linked the seized accounts. However, they say that the company only provided them with "advisory services for promotion in social networks".

The director of the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) Oksana Romaniuk expressed her own opinion in a comment to Ukrinform .

Oksana Romanyuk

"Maybe the reason for the blocking is the distribution of fake news by the mentioned sites, assholes... Well, at first I thought so, because the quality of the content on these sites is extremely low. Even the tongue will not return to call it journalism - the standards are constantly violated. But no. News content has nothing to do with blocking. The reason is not freedom of speech, it is something else: the rules of Facebook regarding the distribution of material of a commercial nature - advertising - have been violated. That is, apparently, some technical points. After all, they used so-called "dead" pages - fake accounts - with a huge number of subscribers, but with zero content, - says Mrs. Romaniuk. - It seems that Ukrainian "craftsmen" simply found some loopholes in the social network to engage in aggressive SMM and promote commercial content. At least, that's my opinion. And regarding the fact that the "political forces of Ukraine" are trying, as they write, to force them to "shut up" and the readers to "close their eyes and ears" - no comments here. It is not clear on whose behalf these "official statements" were written. The entire editorial staff of our portal? Well, well... And who goes there, in this editorial office?.."

It remains to be reminded that the problems in the Ukrainian information market are far from exhausted by this story. After all, the blocking of 149 Facebook pages is not only a drop in the ocean, it is also an initiative of a foreign private business that implemented it. Question: when will Ukraine begin to take adequate measures of its own to, at least, limit information diversions due to the "barrier" remain open?

Myroslav Liskovich . Kyiv