5 Things to Know About the Russia Investigation, Mueller Indictments, Trump Collusion
3. The 'Troll Farm' in St. Petersburg spread false information.
The 13 individuals who were indicted were associated with what is being called a "troll factory" in St. Petersburg.
A former employee of this operation who spoke Saturday described working there as a chapter straight out of George Orwell's dystopian science fiction novel 1984.
Marat Mindiyarov, 43, said in an interview with The Washington Post Saturday that he wound up there by accident — the building was near his home — and was employed there from November 2014 to February 2015. This was a place where "you have to write that white is black and black is white." People were also paid to spread false information and write fake news stories around the clock.
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"Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line. The volumes were colossal — there were huge numbers of people, 300 to 400, and they were all writing absolute untruths."
During his months there Mindiyarov worked in the commenting department and would post untruths in comments that did not reflect his opinions whatsoever on news articles from Russian outlets. He had to write in his own words, capturing the substance of what was written for him. This was all part of a strategy designed to manipulate public perception toward greater support for Russia.
When the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia because of their intervention in Ukraine and the Russian ruble began falling, he was required to write how great life was, that their currency was actually gaining value and that sanctions would make Russia stronger even though the opposite was true.
This type of deception was practiced in a "Facebook Department" to influence Americans, where employees — who were paid twice as much as the Russian news commenters — had to know English perfectly, and was reportedly staffed with modern, stylish, hipster types.
Mindiyarov described working there as "a colossal labor of monkeys," and "pointless." He quit working there for "moral reasons" adding that he believed that the troll farm will remain open and that "the people on the list of indictments have nothing to fear as long as they are in Russia."
