My impression is that troll farms work like much of social media, the vast majority of things they do have zero impact on the world but a very small percentage of their efforts goes viral. I think people like to inflate their actual impact for partisan political reasons.
Still I’ll give an example of very effective propaganda. I was linked to this video a few years back made by “independent Canadian Journalist” Eva Bartlett. She oozed credibility, she was a westerner speaking at the UN and had legitimately been to Syria herself. It appealed to all my biases, she spoke against a mainstream media conspiracy to coverup war crimes to promote war in the Middle East. She even got featured by modestly popular pundit Jimmy Dore. Her video has been watched around a million times or so on YouTube.
Now I won’t comment on the credulity of her claims, but I found it remarkable how when I first watched her video I had NO IDEA she was on RT’s payroll. She was called “Independant Canadian Journalist”. I like to think I’m hard to manipulate but man the Russians played me like a fiddle with this propaganda!
Still I’ll give an example of very effective propaganda. I was linked to this video a few years back made by “independent Canadian Journalist” Eva Bartlett. She oozed credibility, she was a westerner speaking at the UN and had legitimately been to Syria herself. It appealed to all my biases, she spoke against a mainstream media conspiracy to coverup war crimes to promote war in the Middle East. She even got featured by modestly popular pundit Jimmy Dore. Her video has been watched around a million times or so on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog
Regardless of her sincerity, what isn’t obvious at all from these videos is that she’s on Russia Today’s payroll:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/am...
Now I won’t comment on the credulity of her claims, but I found it remarkable how when I first watched her video I had NO IDEA she was on RT’s payroll. She was called “Independant Canadian Journalist”. I like to think I’m hard to manipulate but man the Russians played me like a fiddle with this propaganda!