That troll posting those fake news stories could be . . . Vladimir Putin?

Last September 11, residents of Louisiana experienced a brief and minor panic when a news story started going around that a major explosion had occurred in the city of Centerville, at the site of a facility run by Columbian Chemicals. It was quite the story. Links on social media included stories that appeared to have been reported by CNN, and there was even a YouTube video of ISIS claiming responsibility.

It turned out the whole thing was a hoax, but it was some hoax, and it was easy to see how people believed it because the links provided certainly looked authentic. Whoever did this put some serious time, effort and resources into it. And that raised a legitimate question of just who would find it worthwhile to work so hard perpetrating a hoax that - however convincing at the start - would inevitably be revealed for what it was. The apparent answer? The Russians, specifically at the direction of a close associate of Vladimir Putin:

Last week technology writer Adrian Chen unraveled the elaborate hoax in the New York Times magazine. He discovered how a secretive group in St. Petersburg, Russia, deployed dozens of online “trolls” who propagated the lie, briefly terrorizing the small Louisiana community on the 9/11 anniversary. Mr. Chen identified the group as the Internet Research Agency, reportedly run by a Putin business associate. Preparation for the hoax took months. Dozens of Twitter accounts using false American-sounding names posted hundreds of tweets. Some targeted local newspaper and broadcast journalists, alerting them to the “news.” Trolls created sites designed to look like real Louisiana TV stations and newspapers and posted fake eyewitness reports and photos. They created a Wikipedia entry describing the Columbian Chemicals disaster. Mr. Chen discovered that many of the same accounts also spread phony tales of an Ebola outbreak and a police shooting of an unarmed black woman, both in Atlanta. Independent Russian news media estimate the Internet Research Agency employs 400 trolls. A former staffer, Ludmila Savchuk, told Mr. Chen that over two 12-hour shifts she was expected to produce propaganda amounting to five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and at least 150 comments on posts created by co-workers, often criticizing the American or Ukrainian government. Russian trolls sometimes pose as American liberals or conservatives on U.S. news sites, giving a false impression of public opinion.

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I question whether such an elaborate propaganda effort is worth it, because I really don't think Internet trolls are as influential as they and their financial backers like to think. Rob and I occasionally have to deal with gnats who are paid to post on this site, often re-registering under new fake names after we drop the ban hammer on them. It's a minor annoyance we'd rather do without, but it's really not that big a deal and I don't think the state of American discourse is impacted in any way by the fact that these idiots are spending time doing this. (In fact, they regularly get called out by legitimate commenters who note the irony that they constantly rag on our site for being awful, and yet they're reading it and commenting on it all day, every day. It reminds me of a great line from Cheers in which there's a discussion about people wasting their lives sitting in a bar, and Norm tells Sam, "Just yesterday, Sammy, some guy sat here next to me for 11 hours. Pathetic.") Back to the Russians, though, what do you gain by convincing people for short periods of time that ISIS blew up a chemical plant in Louisiana? Is the idea to instill more fear in Americans about the potential for real terrorist attacks? I'm actually not sure that serves the Russians' strategic interests, since they're doing pretty well with Obama and his supporters minimizing the seriousness of enemy threats - like, say, from Russia. I suppose that if you could really saturate the Internet with enough well-written, insightful comments, you might be able to influence people's thinking a bit, but one thing I suppose this shows is that the Russians understand the power of social media - and they have that in common with the American left, which uses it not only to convince people of their point of view but also to browbeat and try to silence those who disagree with them. So be aware when you see troll activity that those non-sensical posts might be influenced by a little vodka, but also by a lot of money being spent to make you see nonsense. It's almost as bad as believing the propaganda emanating from the Obama Administration.