14 DAY TRIAL // A group called the "Internet Research Agency" operating from Sankt Petersburg, Russia, is said to be at the base of multiple Internet hoaxes spread via social media, according to a report in The New York Times Magazine.
Operating on two fronts, inside and outside Russia's borders, the agency's history shows a trail of false rumors spread to provoke chaos inside the US and to attack Vladimir Putin's political opponents.
The great Columbian Chemicals explosion
Probably the apex of their activity and the hoax that got NYT's attention, the explosion of a chemicals factory in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, on September 11 last year, was attributed to ISIS as an anniversary strike for the original 9/11 attacks.
The rumors were mainly started via Twitter, but fake articles, photos, YouTube videos, and even a Wikipedia page also made their way online, accompanied by SMS messages to persons actually living in St. Mary Parish.
Eventually everything died down after the real Columbian Chemicals company issued a press release, but the damage was done.
Mass panic, paranoia, and fear reached their purpose and state activity was grinded down to a halt.
This didn't stop here though, with a fake Ebola outbreak in Atlanta in December 2014, and the shooting of an unarmed woman in the same town, at the same time, from the same Twitter accounts that spread the false rumors about Columbian Chemicals.
Both events seemed to take advantage of then-current media events, coming right about the same time when real cases of Ebola were being reported in the US, and the shooting of Michael Brown took place in Ferguson, Missouri.
Putin's rivals have a hard time as well
But things aren't better inside Russia's borders, where the Internet Research Agency and its fleet of bot Twitter accounts and Internet trolls are said to be in the service of Vladimir Putin, aiding him by glorifying his every move and viciously attacking any political rival.
Ludmila Savchuk, a former employee of the Internet Research Agency, reveals how she was tasked to leave comments on Russian media articles which were supposed to suggest how Putin's political rivals actually setup the murder of Boris Nemtsov, one of the president's adversaries, as a way to frame Russia's leader.
Other activities she was involved in included posting comments about fake war atrocities committed by the Ukrainian army, leaving opinions to help improve the country's moral facing the ruble collapse, and taking personal attacks on Russian politicians.
Ludmila and the troll farm's activities were carried out via a multitude of mediums, from VKontakte to Facebook, from LiveJournal to Instagram, and about any other media publishing platform that's successful in Russia.
There is no money trail that any outside media outlet can find, but Platon Mamatov came forward as well, as the former owner of a similar troll farm that operated between 2008 and 2013 in the Ural Mountains. He admitted taking orders from members of the United Russia party, the same party from which Putin came from.
Apparently, owning "Internet troll farms" is a high-end business in Russia these days, many of them operating at the behest of Russia's ruling party, with the sole purpose of watering down adverse news and critical user comments with vileness and lies.