Buzzfeed News reports:
Russia’s most infamous troll farm recruited US activists to help stage protests and organize self-defense classes in black communities as part of an effort to sow divisions in US society ahead of the 2016 election and well into 2017.
Four people contacted by what is believed to be the “American Department” of the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency told BuzzFeed News that while they found their contacts strange, they never suspected that they were the target of foreign recruitment.
Buzzfeed details how activists accepted payment to organize protests and provide self-defense classes from what they thought were fellow Americans committed to fighting racial injustice.
One website connected to now-suspended Internet Resarch Agency Facebook and Internet accounts - BlackMattersUS - still is live online and is riddled with the kind of broken English and awkward phrasing one might expect from a site not actually run by anyone in the United States.
Read more: These Americans Were Tricked Into Working For Russia. They Say They Had No Idea. (Buzzfeed News)