New Report Exposes Troll Farm

In the end, trolling is the best tactic for White supremacists, and this report zeroes in on one particular outfit to explain how it all works.

A new report has been released showing how a particular troll farm recruits and radicalizes online, and how they have been effective.

According to the abstract for The Troller Report: A Discursive Observational Study into Troll Groups, authors Cody Webb & Nicole Martine examine the structure and strategy of that troll farm, covering recruitment, radicalization, indoctrination, sociology and behavior and the similarity these type groups share with cyber terrorist. “This paper seeks to demonstrate how the operations are effective and what can be done to combat them, by defining a framework to understand the intergroup biases between the online extremist ideologies and how they can be leveraged to provide an exit path,” the abstract reads. “We will also discuss possible paths of solution to monitor abusive users and to combat coordinated harassment campaigns by different methods of self-moderation and platform changes.”

According to the study which observed activity on Twitter for this, 20 men and women ranging in age from 20-50 and representing several countries are part of what is referred to in the study as the “in-group”, and they take on a number of roles ranging from social engineers to propagandists to infiltrators. “Personas were adopted by the test group throughout identifying as: Jewish, to push an anti-Zionist narrative, African American, to support hate speech by the group, Incel (Involuntary Celibate), to glorify mass shooting violence, rape culture and misogyny, Progressive Satirists, to mask neo-Nazi dog whistles, neo Confederates, to mask racism with patriotism,” the study reads.

The study argues that understanding the tactics of the in-group are important to developing a long-term strategy to combat them and this particular form of terrorism. “These observations enable us to identify the “endpoints” of the group identity and can work to “defang” the group of their power to harass,” the study reads. “At the personal level it helps to understand the psychological profile of the particular participant to develop a method to individually “defang” them of their power to harass as well. We can then use these observations to divide the group at the ideological seams and work towards re-humanization from within the group and also provide exit paths to leave the group.”

The Troller Report