How to spot a Russian troll on social media.

[Swede]

This is from a reddit sub thread: One hint: they don't care if you insult them but they are total suckers with one weak spot: they cannot stand it when you insult Mother Russia itself. It's fun because they'll often lose their composure and start to gang up when you start cracking on their piss poor smelly beet farm country. End all your posts insulting their country with "Slava Ukraini" just to put the cherry on top.


https://www.reddit.com/r/oliver/comments/1atiktp/russian_trolls_are_destroying_probiden_subreddits/

[Walleye]

1. They all use the Russian propaganda talking points, for example

They are all out this morning saying Trump should never have been fined in New York because there were no victims to his crime. Word for word, so many of them

[kwijybo]

40. So, not all MAGAts are Russian Trolls, but all Russian Trolls are MAGAts

The MAGAts tend to use the Russian talking points, too.

[PurgedVoter]

41. Yep, so taking money from banks and lying about assets is victimless.

So fraud is good then. I am pretty sure someone more knowledgeable can tell us where Trumps crimes caused even more issues, that's just the top one I could extract.
Does he love bank robbers as well?

[PatSeg]

2. Oh that is brilliant!

Thank you!

[Wicked Blue]

3. Thank you - I love trolling russian trolls

[keithbvadu2]

4. 1+

[Farmer-Rick]

5. They also don't like it

If you point out how very short Putin is.

I think the Russian Trolls would have got me kicked off DU if not for the ignore feature.

I went back to look at who I had on ignore and most of them are gone or currently their accounts are being reviewed.

But some of them are still buzzing around here trying to provoke and disrupt with several different screen names.

Remember how Putin had to bend his neck UP when he talked to Malaria? That's when I realized he was overcompensating.

Slava Ukraini.....may that short man in the gold palace at Cape Idokopas face the same end as his political opponents that are no longer with us.

[mwooldri]

31. I suppose the RW talking points about Biden

Would work on Putin too. He is 71. Certainly old enough for a UK bus pass and a state pension. Don't know what benefits senior citizens get in Mother Russia.

[Mopar151]

52. How old is he in dog years?

In other words, given that male life expectancy in Russia is about 53 years, and US is ,~80, how "old" is Pootie? By my rough figgern`, that makes him around 100 in "Yankee dog" years!
Dictators are most dangerous in decline......

[Iggo]

35. "Under Review" has meant "tombstoned" for a while now.

[Farmer-Rick]

37. That's good to know

I just never went back to look at my ignore list status before.

[EYESORE 9001]

6. I'll get busy

It’s been awhile, but I have the experience for this task.

[blm]

9. Lolol

I do it every day.

[mopinko]

7. they also post in the middle of the night here.

work hours in moscow.

[markodochartaigh]

8. I've noticed that

I will make a comment that has some upvotes when I go to bed around 1AM Eastern, then if I check when I get up to pee around 5AM suddenly it has been downvoted a lot. And there may be an argumentative reply. But the grammar of US natives is so poor that, unless it is an odd mistake, poor grammar doesn't seem to be a way to identify foreign trolls.

[blm]

10. Yup

[DFW]

18. In the case of Russians, there IS a grammar clue they often leave that even Republicans don't make

Last edited Mon Feb 19, 2024, 02:40 AM - Edit history (1)

I'm not talking about the use of Republicanese, such using an apostrophe to form a plural ("dog's" instead of "dogs," "party's" instead of "parties," etc.), or getting "its" and "it's" confused. There is something more indicative than that: Russian, as with Slavic languages in general, does not have articles. The words "a" or "the" do not exist in Russian. We insert them into translations according to context because our language demands it, not theirs.

To Russians, the word город (gorod) means "city," "a city" or "the city." It is why the spoof spies in Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, said "get moose and squirrel" instead of "get the moose and the squirrel." Russian (and Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian, etc.) has no articles, and native speakers of these languages have a hard time learning when to use them in English, and when not to. It is a totally alien concept to them. It is also why it's ridiculous to say it is politically incorrect to say "the Ukraine." That is a perfectly correct way to translate Украiна, as is "a Ukraine" or just "Ukraine." In Ukrainian, they all mean the same thing: Украiна.

As for posting at hours unusual to you people living in North America--there are other countries here in Europe besides Russia. DU has members living not only here in Germany, but also France, Switzerland and Sweden, and that's probably not all. We also have at least one in Japan. The hour of posting may be an indication, but it's only that.

[yardwork]

21. I've noticed that, but AI is probably going to make it more difficult to tell.

There are certain other tells I've noticed.

[Ocelot II]

51. Apropos of nothing but articles,

Japanese doesn't have them either. A friend is a Japanese translator who used to teach English to Japanese students. She explained that the students didn't get the concept of articles at all, so they'd try to disguise their confusion by just using "some" instead of either "a" or "the." I don't suppose we'll mistake Russian trolls for Japanese trolls on the basis of article consternation, though.

[LeftInTX]

55. I don't think Armenian has them either.

Grandma: "Go store"

[DFW]

57. Japanese also has a completely different word order.

To them, English is spoken backwards, just as to us, Japanese is spoken backwards. That is why most Japanese use short sentences if their English is not fluent.

The classic phrase given in some "learn Japanese" books is "My wife wore a new dress when she came home." In Japanese, that would be "my wife-ga she home came when, new-being (Japanese adjectives have time) dress-O wore." To become fluent in Japanese, forming sentences that way has to become second nature to you. My nephews never forgave their mom, my brother's wife, for not speaking Japanese to them from birth, so that they could become fluent. An infant is like a blank hard drive--you can program it in any language at all, including several at once. Learning a new language after you are used to using your cradle language(s) for years is far more difficult. Of the languages I know, I had to learn all of them in school, or from work and travel. For that reason, my wife and I raised our daughters bi-lingually from birth. I always spoke to them in English, and my wife always spoke to them in German. Today, they speak both flawlessly, to the point where not even native speakers would guess they are equally fluent in "the other" language.

[LeftInTX]

53. We had someone like that on DU about a month ago

They got tomb stoned.

I got the impression that person was a foreigner due to their grammar. They also said they would like to live in California because they had seen pictures of it...

[LT Barclay]

38. On rawstory, they stick out because they are the only ones posting with normal sounding first and last names as user ID.

The people with those ID's will argue endlessly, are always wrong on facts, and quickly jump to insults and personal attacks.

[William769]

11. Вы правы

[blm]

12. They and MAGA trolls also have MAJOR fails when confronted with this fact

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/latest-updates-biden-trump-election-2020/card/32vHNFTTc2xxNr7NITHY

Biden-Voting Counties Equal 70% Of The U.S. Economy [Infographic]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/11/17/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-the-us-economy-infographic/?sh=301f13384e5d

?fit=scale

[blm]

13. They have spent decades convinced that THEY do all the work

in this country while Democrats do nothing. Turns out that Dems are doing the heavy lifting that keeps the US economy afloat.

[Aristus]

28. Yeah, Trumpsters definitely don't contribute as much as they think they do.

Ordering the cheapest burger in a dive sports bar, and selling meth on the side is not how one helps build a solid economy.

[Think. Again.]

19. That's interesting...

...I wonder if there's a way around the Electoral College (since it can't be just eliminated) would be to adapt it to some kind of 'per capita' area delineation rather than land mass boundaries.

[anamnua]

25. Create more states NT

[Think. Again.]

27. or simply allocate the number of electors by population.

...but I'm sure this has been re-hashed over and over.

I really hope the 'Interstate Compact' reaches it's 270 goal someday.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

[soldierant]

45. The one which is already being worked on is the

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. You can look them uup on wikipedia or their own website. The only glitch is that it doesn't take effect until states with enough electoral votes to provide a majority sign on That would be .270 as of now. Also as of now (well, last month) we have 205. That's not a bad start but more are needed. My state is signed on..

[Think. Again.]

48. I'm hopeful for this...

...but we're still gonna have to have a very strong strong Democratic turnout for the all-important election this November, and a strong response to whatever they're planning to pull after the election.

[soldierant]

62. Amen!

[Sugarcoated]

14. This is my specialty!

For those who fight propaganda on social media, what sites/accounts/platforms do you focus on?

My social media of choice:
Huffington Post
The Washington Post
Threads
On Instagram:
NPR
The Lincoln Project
MSNBC
The Atlantic
Biden and Harris Insta accounts

[MontanaMama]

17. I'm on Instagram often and

I follow and comment on all of your IG choices with the exception of msnbc. The Lincoln Project and Biden/Harris accounts in particular are mobbed by Russian trolls. I would also add Luke Beasley, Molly Jong-Fast and The Tiny Prick’s Project to the list if you want to fight trolls. I have a private account and any time I make a comment on these threads, my follow requests explode with Russian bots and trolls. They’re so predictable.

[DFW]

20. Of those listed, I only check the Washington Post

Their comments section is FULL of Russian trolls. Some of them have learned good English, but many of them are not completely fluent, and leave out articles like "a" and "the" where they belong. When they say things like "Ukraine is not independent country," instead of " (the) Ukraine is not an independent country," they give themselves away pretty quickly.

[Think. Again.]

49. I actually catch myself doing that kind of thing also, I'm embarassed to say.

[DFW]

56. We all do it on occasion as a typo when we type too fast.

They do it habitually because their language doesn't have an equivalent, and they find it confusing. That's the difference.

[surfered]

15. I prefer Putin's trolls...

…as Navalny was Russian. Slava Ukraini!

[yardwork]

24. That's how I think of it, too.

Also, as an aside, it's very annoying that after decades of listening to right wing hysteria about "the Russians" we actually are now fighting a propaganda invasion by... Putin's Russia.

It's one reason they've been able to make deep inroads on the left. A lot of left-leaning Americans are used to ridiculing anti-Russian hysteria. And yet here we are.

[willamette]

42. I've heard variations

I've heard variations of "Muscovy or Moscovia" to describe Putin's permutation, as opposed to the rest of the Russians. It seems that a lot of the different areas are seeing some negatives in being attached to the Moscow/Saint Petersburg rulers.

[meow2u3]

16. Call Putin a bald shrimp/midget and see how the trolls get PO'd

Or you can chant "Putin is a d**khead" to rile them up, or refer to Russia as Mordor.

[Farmer-Rick]

30. You made me spit out

My drink from laughing.

Calling Putin what he really is: a bald short dickhead who lives in Mordor will rile up the Russian Trolls for sure.

[calimary]

22. Good to know!

[anamnua]

23. Cicero's 2000 year old spoof unscrambler still holds true:

'Cui bono?' (who benefits?)

[GreenWave]

29. Part of me wants to join in the fun and the other wants to cry.

Not all Russians support Putin or that war. People should not be blamed for the sins of the rulers or power elite. And as one Finn told me about WWII, "For every Nazi we killed back then, we should kill 2 Russians!" I said, "Let me correct that for you then... for every Nazi you unfortunately had to kill, you should happily kill 2 Russians!"

And if you really want to piss off trolls, my Russian expert recommends saying that Crimea belongs to Ukraine.

[Wonder Why]

32. or "the Crimea belongs to the Ukraine"?

[PurgedVoter]

43. The Short, Old dictator, Putin loves history so history bombs work. If you go by history, Russia is owned by Ukraine.

Moscow was originally a Ukrainian trading post. In the original language it probably means Wet Cow, Cow River or Damp Cow. So to translate MossCow is fine. If you go to other theories of meaning, Black Wife is quite possible or even Tangled Wet. In any case Moscow was so uncivilized for so long that there is no clear history. Moscow does have a long history of exporting pain, grief, genocide and cruelty.

[soldierant]

46. Did you intend for "Short Old Dictator" to be

acronymed to "SOD"? And if so, did you mean that in the British sense? OK, I know that's a couple of steps, but I'm sure Putin would REALLY not like it.

[PurgedVoter]

47. Bolloxed would have been harder so SOD is good.

Speaking of short Russians, Red Dwarf sounds good too. Smeg might work if your a Red Dwarf fan. Small, Egotistical, Gnome.

[Iggo]

36. Trying and failing to imagine a Nazi being unfortunately killed.

[gay texan]

33. Theyve been active on amatuer radio lately

I wont talk to them.

[pecosbob]

34. Russians aren't the only ones. It's pretty easy to spot the 'pinks' as well.

Talk smack about China and you'll get mobbed by the fifty cent army.

[JI7]

39. Responses also don't make sense sometimes

becsuse some don't know English that well and their reply is based on things they think we attack them for and they have replies ready for those.

[edbermac]

44. Check their accounts.

They usually have tens of thousands of followers.

[orangecrush]

50. They are particularly numerous

On live streaming discussion threads

[SoFlaBro]

54. There is a bunch of these motherfuckers with a black person as their profile pic. Some random black person in the car.

Always in the fucking car.

[red dog 1]

58. K&R

Twitter (X) users can anger the Ruskie trolls by using the hashtag #PutinKilledNavalny, (which is now trending on X)

[DinahMoeHum]

59. You can also use the hashtag #PutinKhuylo. . .

. . .meaning "Putin is a dick-head"

[red dog 1]

60. Also trending now is hashtag #NavalnyHero

[shrike3]

61. They're not very good at American vernacular.

I remember one poster -- not here -- who called an antagonist "smelly." Where he got that adjective, I don't know. But it kind of gave him away. btw, this was years before the advent of Smelvis.