Reality Check Commentary: Kremlin’s World-Class Dashboard Maximizes Disinformation, at 26 Cents Per Lie
"The leaked information disclosed that workers at Russian troll farms earn $660 a month for writing 100 comments per day on social media," writes NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz
Welcome to a special edition of NewsGuard's Reality Check, a report on how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Reality Check Commentary: Kremlin’s World-Class Dashboard Maximizes Disinformation, at 26 Cents Per Lie
By Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard Co-CEO
NewsGuard analysts track state-sponsored disinformation, but until now we didn’t know how authoritarian governments track their wins in this arena. A recent Washington Post report based on Kremlin documents the Post says it obtained from a European intelligence service makes clear — assuming the documents are authentic — how Russia earns its disinformation superpower status. The documents include screenshots of a sophisticated digital dashboard measuring how well Vladimir Putin’s operatives spread falsehoods and propaganda to undermine democracies.
Disinformation Dashboard: The Washington Post reported that this dashboard is reviewed nearly weekly by the Kremlin to measure the success of its “information psychological operations” targeting Ukraine. A translation of a sample screenshot from the dashboard indicates that it measures goals including discrediting the Ukraine government, dividing the elite in that country, demoralizing the Ukrainian armed forces, and creating divisions among the Ukrainian population. The platforms listed by the Russian officials that they use to spread disinformation need no translation: Twitter (X), Facebook, Telegram, and Instagram:
Russia’s unreal “additional reality”: Russian disinformation operatives internally use the Orwellian shorthand “additional reality” to describe the false claims they create and spread. One of the dashboards brags about getting two million views of a false claim that the family of a killed Ukrainian soldier had not received any support from the government. Another win was the spread of the falsehood that Kyiv defines its main war aim as “to fight to the last Ukrainian.”
Twenty-six cents per lie, based on the disinformation price list: The leaked information disclosed that workers at Russian troll farms earn $660 a month for writing 100 comments per day on social media. That’s 26 cents per lie, assuming 25 workdays per month. The documents also include a price list to pay social media influencers “willing to work with Russian clients” and to pay up to $39,000 for pro-Russia commentaries published in major media outlets in the U.S. and Europe. (The Washington Post says it’s unclear from the documents whether any such articles were placed in Western media, or if anyone had earned a fee.)
In the West, sophisticated dashboards like these are associated with data scientists helping researchers to cure diseases or marketing professionals buying and gauging responses to advertisements. For the Kremlin, resources are instead devoted to building a world-class, interactive disinformation productivity chart.
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