CNN points out Russian trolls still are operating and thriving online, thanks in part to reputable media outlets amplifying messages without checking whether there is a real person behind the account.
More than 50,000 people followed @wokeluisa, an account that featured a photograph of a young black woman who called herself Luisa Haynes and claimed to be a political science major from New York. Twitter has identified @wokeluisa as the work of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm and propaganda operation linked to the Kremlin.
Trolls created the account in March 2017, and racked up an impressive number of followers in just one year. The account, which has been suspended, remained active until at least three months ago ...
Journalists helped propel the account's remarkable growth, which continued even after Twitter and Facebook vowed to crack down on troll accounts. CNN found more than two dozen instances in which tweets from @wokeluisa appeared in news stories published by the BBC, USA Today, Time, Wired, HuffPo, BET, and others.
... Many of the account's tweets were retweeted thousands of times.
So far, Twitter has identified 4,000 fake accounts tied to the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency troll factory, which Special Counsel Robert Muller has indicted on charges related to 2016 election interference.
Twitter and Facebook have launched aggressive efforts ahead of the midterm elections to eliminate trolls and avoid a repeat of 2016, when millions of Americans saw social media posts on those platforms and others created by Russians. Yet bogus accounts continue to litter social media and spread disinformation.
"The metaphor that constantly comes up is whack-a-mole," says Kris Shaffer, a senior research analyst at New Knowledge, a firm that tracks the spread of disinformation online.
CNN explains how easy it is for trolls to use mainstream news outlets if they are not vetting social media content.
Social media posts serve as a modern-day vox populi, and news outlets often include them to create a richer, more interactive experience.
Yet many publishers do not attempt to verify the authenticity of an account before embedding a tweet or post. In many cases, including that of @wokeluisa, publishers may not see any need to do so because the posts are lighthearted, even humorous. But featuring such tweets and posts increases the credibility and reach of those accounts.
This helped the Russian trolls, because many of the accounts they created in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election featured a mix of innocuous and politically charged material. They appeared to use inoffensive, often humorous comments to tap into the virality of trending hashtags and memes, helping build an audience later exposed to divisive political comment.
American media keeps falling for Russian trolls (CNN)
Exposing Russia’s Effort to Sow Discord Online: The Internet Research Agency and Advertisements (press release)