Undercover Reporter Reveals Life In a Polish Troll Farm (theguardian.com) 101
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It is as common an occurrence on Polish Twitter as you are likely to get: a pair of conservative activists pouring scorn on the country's divided liberal opposition. "I burst out laughing!" writes Girl from oliborz, a self-described "traditionalist" commenting on a newspaper story about a former campaign adviser to Barack Obama and Emmanuel Macron coming to Warsaw to address a group of liberal activists. "The opposition has nothing to offer. That's why they use nonsense to pull the wool over people's eyes," replies Magda Rostocka, whose profile tells her almost 4,400 followers she is "left-handed with her heart on the right."
In reality, neither woman existed. Both accounts were run by the paid employees of a small marketing company based in the city of Wrocaw in southwest Poland. But what the employee pretending to be Magda Rostocka did not know is that the colleague pretending to be Girl from oliborz was an undercover reporter who had infiltrated the company, giving rare insight into the means by which fake social media accounts are being used by private firms to influence unsuspecting voters and consumers. The undercover reporter, Katarzyna Pruszkiewicz, spent six months this year working at Cat@Net, which describes itself as an "ePR agency comprising specialists who build a positive image of companies, private individuals and public institutions -- mostly in social media." "One of Pruszkiewicz's responsibilities was to operate anonymous accounts with instructions to promote content produced by TVP, Poland's state broadcaster, which is widely reviled by critics for its extreme partisanship and hate speech directed against minority groups," the report says. "'It would be great if you posted positive comments about the government's subsidy for TVP and the television license fee,' read an email from her manager."
A London-based thinktank found that Cat@Net accounts created up to 10,000 posts in defense of TVP, with a potential reach of 15 million views. The agency also helped a recently elected member of the Polish parliament for the leftwing Democratic Left Alliance party. "Cat@Net's leftwing accounts promoted the politician's candidacy to the European Parliament in elections held in May this year, with at least 90 different accounts circulating and responding to his social media posts," reports The Guardian. "The company's rightwing accounts would then oppose the leftwing accounts, generating conflict and traffic, thereby drawing attention to the candidate."
In response to the article, Cat@Net strongly denied it was a "troll farm": "The company's field of activity is the outsourcing of marketing operations to social media. We communicate accurate information, speak for our clients, and promote their products and services like any other agency of its kind."
In reality, neither woman existed. Both accounts were run by the paid employees of a small marketing company based in the city of Wrocaw in southwest Poland. But what the employee pretending to be Magda Rostocka did not know is that the colleague pretending to be Girl from oliborz was an undercover reporter who had infiltrated the company, giving rare insight into the means by which fake social media accounts are being used by private firms to influence unsuspecting voters and consumers. The undercover reporter, Katarzyna Pruszkiewicz, spent six months this year working at Cat@Net, which describes itself as an "ePR agency comprising specialists who build a positive image of companies, private individuals and public institutions -- mostly in social media." "One of Pruszkiewicz's responsibilities was to operate anonymous accounts with instructions to promote content produced by TVP, Poland's state broadcaster, which is widely reviled by critics for its extreme partisanship and hate speech directed against minority groups," the report says. "'It would be great if you posted positive comments about the government's subsidy for TVP and the television license fee,' read an email from her manager."
A London-based thinktank found that Cat@Net accounts created up to 10,000 posts in defense of TVP, with a potential reach of 15 million views. The agency also helped a recently elected member of the Polish parliament for the leftwing Democratic Left Alliance party. "Cat@Net's leftwing accounts promoted the politician's candidacy to the European Parliament in elections held in May this year, with at least 90 different accounts circulating and responding to his social media posts," reports The Guardian. "The company's rightwing accounts would then oppose the leftwing accounts, generating conflict and traffic, thereby drawing attention to the candidate."
In response to the article, Cat@Net strongly denied it was a "troll farm": "The company's field of activity is the outsourcing of marketing operations to social media. We communicate accurate information, speak for our clients, and promote their products and services like any other agency of its kind."
Shareblue / Media Matters (Score:1, Insightful)
David Brock basically invented the troll-farm business model. The Clinton campaign was paying him over $1 million per month for the same astroturfing services.
Who is paying Shareblue right now?
Re:Shareblue / Media Matters (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't sources providing biased disinformation. The problem is an electorate which can't make truly informed decisions by themselves.
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Admit it: you like the attention.
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Left/right. Conservative/liberal. Up/down. It doesn't matter. The problem isn't sources providing biased disinformation. The problem is an electorate which can't make truly informed decisions by themselves.
Sorta. The trolling as a part of a campaign has been brought up to "scientific level". This is too long to post in a comment - I have whole series on my blog.
1. How it came to be: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
2. What it was used for: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk] and https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
3. It's actual role in the context of BrExit. USA elections are not any different by the way - the spiel is a form of "Distraction Burglary": https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]
Re:Shareblue / Media Matters (Score:4, Interesting)
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The question is why do people choose to read biased and lying sources instead of the more truthful sources? Lack of critical thinking surely plays a large part, many people are either lazy or don't have the right analytical thinking skills to determined when they are obviously being bullshitted.
They choose to read biased sources such as right wing press that either make up stories or use corporate sponsored think-tanks for their lies, biased info, opinion, lies of omission and fallacious reasoning.
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I've seen the results of levels of factual incorrectness in press and the right wing press is top for being incorrect at least in the UK, I'd expect it to be similar elsewhere. Left wing tends to prioritise lower pollution, better health, better public services, better human rights.
What is the priority for the right wing?
Re:Shareblue / Media Matters (Score:4)
As for human rights, especially when it comes to free speech and privacy, both left and right pay lip service to these things, but when it comes down to it they are happy to drop them in exchange for other concessions or because it's expedient. That was one of the reasons I voted for the Pirate Party last time round, because for them it really is a core issue.
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Left and right are the wrong paradigms and this is very much to the benefit of corporations the real measure is how much you let corporations get away with and how much control you give them.
Corporations are pychopaths and their over-riding goal is to expand and profit at the expense of all else, if that's not curtailed then it will and often does end badly.
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Do you realize that government is the largest corporation of all. Right?
Banker InfoOps (Score:2)
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better health (though by different methods)
I think that's being overly generous. Clearly the priority is not better outcomes, it's reducing the perceived financial burden on the healthy.
better human rights
I think this one comes down to a lack of agreement about what human rights are. The right tends to be very focused on the government not interfering, while the left tends to think more about what the minimum needs a person has.
People on the right think they are the good guys, upholding freedom and individu
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I think that's being overly generous. Clearly the priority is not better outcomes, it's reducing the perceived financial burden on the healthy.
Not necessarily. We used to have a (mostly) public health care system; it was affordable and covered everyone, but the level of service and care was dire, with long waiting lists even for essential and urgent procedures. Health care was partly (and at first very carefully) privatized by the right, primarily to address those shortcomings, not to lower costs. And with great success.
Not that they have all the answers; they're way too chummy with insurance companies and while we still have universal coverag
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I am not sure what version of "right" you are talking about, but that's not what is happening in the USA today.
The right in the USA is focused on:
1. Reduce taxes for the wealthy.
2. Eliminate anything that might reduce profits for the wealthy, including protecting the environment, protecting worker h
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People believe this stuff because they aren't hit with obvious lies up front, they are slowly drawn in so that their world-view is altered until the lies seem plausible.
It might start as a few mild memes or funny stories, but as they build up the human brain looks for patterns and eventually, after years of it, you get people believing outlandish conspiracy theories or obvious falsehoods.
There's another aspect at work now too: post-truth politics. People know that what people like Boris and Trump say is oft
If it (fictionally) bleeds, it (still) leads. (Score:2)
At least that is what writing classes have taught me about the human psyche.
People can emphasize with pretty much anything. It doesn't matter that if it's fictional or real, what matters is that the emotions it conjures in them are real, meaning that the fiction becomes real in their minds.
Fear has proven to work great here at catching the attention of people. The fear that somethin
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The fundamental problem is not that these fears are 'perceptional'. Some of them are very well justified. The problem is that people let their buttons get pushed too easily. Especially if the blame for their problems can be conveniently shifted onto someone else.
I've been living here in Germany since shortly after the Soviet Union fell and we
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The question is why do people choose to read biased and lying sources instead of the more truthful sources? Lack of critical thinking surely plays a large part, many people are either lazy or don't have the right analytical thinking skills to determined when they are obviously being bullshitted.
They choose to read biased sources such as right wing press that either make up stories or use corporate sponsored think-tanks for their lies, biased info, opinion, lies of omission and fallacious reasoning.
I think it's also that most people instinctively need to belong to an in-group - and they want that to be the winning in-group. In most people that desire to be on the winning side is far, far stronger than any disinterested wish to know the objective truth.
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When the majority lack critical thinking, when politicians just pander to lobbyists and when the corporate goal is primarily money it's obvious that this isn't going to end well.
Re: Shareblue / Media Matters (Score:2)
The question is why do people choose to read biased and lying sources instead of the more truthful sources
Gee, I dunno... why would anyone do something so stupid...
:/
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The question is why do people choose to read biased and lying sources instead of the more truthful sources?
Very few sources outright lie. The "bias" comes more from people having different values, so which true facts they care about vary.
On the same day, an unarmed black man is shot by police and a pretty white girl is murdered by an illegal alien. Fox devotes all the headlines to the illegal alien murderer and ignores the dead black guy, and CNN does the opposite. Nobody's lying. But the networks and their audiences have a different idea of which of these things is important. There is no "objective" measure of
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2 examples of distraction by crime - distraction from important issues that affect everybody. Reporting crime statistics in context - the right thing to do. Reporting individual crimes with dramatisation and without context is entertainment, not news. Both CNN and FOX are simply trying to increase ad revenue by using crime as entertainment rather than crime reporting as an issue.
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Sure, but you asked why people don't look for "more truthful sources." The "important issues that effect everybody" generally aren't important to everybody and don't actually effect everybody. They effect you, so you think they're important, but the things I think are important you probably don't.
People always think if the other side just knew the facts they'd be on your side, and since they're not, it's because they're lying or willfully ignoring the facts. No, they can be completely aware of those facts,
Sure, Mr SOVIET (Score:1)
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The problem isn't sources providing biased disinformation. The problem is an electorate which can't make truly informed decisions by themselves.
Exactly right!
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe".
- Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey (6 January 1816)
Unfortunately, all
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How can I make an informed decision if the input information is false? Comparing well known (opposite) biased sources can only get you so far....
Trigger warning: I will give an example with Trump!
Sat for a few months in the same room with classical conservative and GOP voter. Nerd. Texan. He hated Trump - did not vote for him on the primaries and did not vote in the elections. Yet, on three consecutive occasions I read something about the president in an EU news source and comment on it. Every single time t
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Left/right. Conservative/liberal. Up/down. It doesn't matter. The problem isn't sources providing biased disinformation. The problem is an electorate which can't make truly informed decisions by themselves.
How can the electorate do this when the data pool is overrun with questionable information sources? If the sources were fully known and people could judge the credibility on their own, that's one thing. Believing fake news is on you at that point. That's not what we have.
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To make this a bit more relevant for Europe: all roads lead back to a couple of foundations like the Open Societies Foundations.
For example that "London-based think tank" ISD Global partners with them: https://www.isdglobal.org/isda... [isdglobal.org] (under foundations) Or the mentioned Investigate Europe where they are the biggest donor: https://www.investigate-europe... [investigate-europe.eu]
Funny how one conservative firm gets this much attention. Yet they completely ignore the connections behind these left-wing groups who are running a mas
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Media Matters changed their name to Shareblue. Same org.
What trolls? (Score:3, Funny)
Sarcasm and contempt are REALLY good forms of argument, and everyone who thinks otherwise is a goddamn fool.
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Does that make you feel funny inside?
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If someone uses the expression "troll" you completely dismiss their argument because you have no answer for it? Does that make you feel funny inside?
So what should we do? Take a bunch of people seriously who are paid to go some site and argue for both sides to generate publicity? For all I care most of these social media sites should be shit down during elections and if they forgot to put them online again I would not be in any great hurry to fix that oversight. And yes, I’d get a laugh out of watching tolls and social media junkies getting addiction withdrawal tremors.
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But to be perfectly fair, you should take everyone equally serious until you have compelling evidence that they're nothing other than just 'trolls' for the sake of 'trolling'.
And if you have that evidence, then probably just don't dignify their trolling by given them the attention they want. Because that is exactly their usual goal, get attention and draw in as many infuriated participants as possible.
Wait, is that why you replied to my post instead of the other?
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Hit the reply link to the wrong post?
This is a thread about troll farms in case you didn't notice.
But to be perfectly fair, you should take everyone equally serious until you have compelling evidence that they're nothing other than just 'trolls' for the sake of 'trolling'. And if you have that evidence, then probably just don't dignify their trolling by given them the attention they want. Because that is exactly their usual goal, get attention and draw in as many infuriated participants as possible. Wait, is that why you replied to my post instead of the other?
Yeah, and you should approach any email you get from a Nigerian prince as a genuine investment opportunity until you obtain evidence that the sender is proven to be a chisler trolling for suckers? I hope the naive approach works out for you, I'll stick to assuming everybody is a troll until proven otherwise.
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Hanlon's razors makes a guess here. And since you like jumping to conclusions maybe so should I, I guess.
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That's the joke.
Unfortunately a lot of people do not seem to care about actual arguments in the first place.
There's a lot of reasons for the 'why' here. Maybe they never learned to think in rational terms, trying to putt their immediate emotional responses aside. Maybe they don't want to, because it takes a lot and constant effort to weigh your own position and feelings against the facts, which you have to filter as well. Group think and going with the flow is a lot
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Sarcasm and contempt are REALLY good forms of argument, and everyone who thinks otherwise is a goddamn fool.
And everyone who blindly agrees is a troll. Without logic to back up your claims then you are simply yelling that the other person is wrong. We might as well go back to name calling if we abandon logic.
Re:What trolls? Scientifie trolls! (Score:2)
Is your original subject a joke about the trolls invading thsi discussion?
Sarcasm and contempt are REALLY good forms of argument, and everyone who thinks otherwise is a goddamn fool.
Touche?
Actually the problem is that the technology of psychological manipulation has developed over the years. People have always tended to believe what they want to believe, but the manipulators of public opinion have become much better at matching their preferred beliefs to the beliefs that they want to push.
It's actually become another time-based campaign for victory. People don't have enough time to believe everything, but the pro
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Since my post was very meta, it's hard for me to know how many people responding to it took it at face value. Especially since it was at first voted 'insightful' rather than 'funny'. To those who did, I'll inform you that I think incredulity and contempt are the most profound forms of evil that can infest the human mind.
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I think incredulity and contempt are the most profound forms of evil that can infest the human mind.
Well, there's no accounting for taste... but really, incredulity and contempt are perfectly suitable and appropriate responses to arrogance and conceit.
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Right up until you see a nice Gene Wilder image macro about those arrogant and conceited jerks who disagree with you.
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Acknowledged, but I wish you'd corrected my typo in the Subject.
Anyway, I think Slashdot used to have much more humor, both insight-based and the light, fluffy stuff. Your user ID goes back farther than mine (but I did drop off for some years in there).
Re:What trolls? Scientific trolls! (Score:2)
This time for sure!
Re: The Guardian - I'm sure it a balanced perspect (Score:1)
Crowd-sourced joke thread (Score:2)
How many Polish trolls does it take to influence an election?
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You seem nice.
Just one British one. (Score:2)
He can make up as many trolls as he likey and nobody will notice he is a made up troll himself. ;)
Is anyone else reminded of South Park's "Does she know she's an ad?"?
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No, I am a paid Russian troll. I work out of Moscow. Never been to Poland! I also get a Christmas Bonus. You must be new here.
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No, I am a paid Russian troll. I work out of Moscow. Never been to Poland! I also get a Christmas Bonus. You must be new here.
Christmas is dead, it fell heroically in an epic last stand with Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny during the recent war on Christmas.
What's the difference between ads and trolling? (Score:2)
Ads are misleading images and words whose primary purpose is to annoy people. Sounds like a troll farm to me.
Did you get trolled? (Score:2)
Now I'm wondering if you go trolled.
Because of course the primary purpose of an ad isn't to annoy people.
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"Annoy" is massively understating it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern marketers usually learn all the psychology to sneakily manipulate you.
E.g. NLP. And all the nasty tricks.
People always assume some free will. But how much of their views is actually based on checking for themselves? (I never even checked it Trump actually exists. I just assume it, based on "sources" telling me. Even though I know about deepfakes.)
It isn't even sensible and often plainly impossible to check everything for yourself. But that is what we base our views and emotions on. ;)
The problems emerge when people cannot accept the fact that it likely isn't their independent will steering them. Like most people do. It makes it so very easy to steer people, as they will, by themselves willfully ignore it happening.
All you have to do, is find some triggers, and push the right ones. Then offer them something to relieve the urge.
And if they don't have the right triggers, you breed them through endless repetition of the same association between some thing and some other bad/good thing. The best part: After a while, the social pressure will be so great, that they will just go along anyway and feel ashamed to dare mentioning the "unpopular" view.
But I digress.
My point is: Ads are there to systematically manipulate you into giving away money on a product *even if it is an inferior choice*. And is nearly always is. Because otherwise you don't need to advertise, as people will do it for you. (Example: Google in its early days.) (And yes, that is usually faked too, aka "viral marketing".)
It is a form of literal assault. Patterns are pushed into your senses to alter your brain's links in a way that is ultimately harmful for you. Which, yes, is a physical change. Dentrites grow and die off as a result, synapses become more or less sensitive or active wrt to neurotransmitters, etc. Like with any sensory input. But here it is intentionally ultimately harmful. (You lose more money than you gain product.)
It is far more than merely "annoying".
Re:"Annoy" is massively -- fair enough (Score:2)
so what is the solution? Do you advocate making all marking and advertising illegal? Might need to refine that a bit, but I could agree with that on some level.
So now you know (Score:4)
Whenever you're wonder how a person could have a completely insane position, you might now find out that there isn't even a person that has this position...
Revealed by ANOTHER TROLL FARM. (Score:1)
That casually mentioned "London-based think tank" is just another lobbyist firm trolling you right now with this very article.
Not that they aren't probably right about what they *say*.
But as always, it's what they didn't.
I'm sorry... it's trolling all the way down.
Trolls... on slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW. I sometimes wonder how many paid trolls there are that visit Slashdot. ...
The trolls seem to come out in droves whenever there is a story on climate change or politics
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Trolling isn't very labour intensive. It's mostly copy/paste spam of one kind of another. Therefore even seemingly low value targets like Slashdot get hit.
I wonder if they think it isn't so low value though. Maybe there are some valuable targets here.
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Who paid the GNAA?
wouldn't surprise if half these were false flags (Score:2)
And it wouldn't surprise me if half these things were false flags. OK, maybe not, but surely this is way overblown. Because it's so satisfying.
"Look, my opposition doesn't even exist!" is just such a satisfying story, even better than "my opposition is stupid/crazy/inbred/etc."
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But then again, what do you expect? Social media is basically graffiti. Why we invest it with so much importance I'll never know. How hard is it to "fake" graffiti?
Clear takeaway: (Score:4, Insightful)
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interesting definitions (Score:3)
Governments or political movements massaging public discussion and debate in directions that they want it to go: "troll farm"
Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube, Reddit staffers DIRECTLY intervening to control the narrative, deplatform one political side's voices, and "prevent Trump from ever happening again" = what, again?
American Egos (Score:2)
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Newsflash: We're the biggest and baddest and best armed military on the planet, and we're not shy about expeditionary adventures.
If you're too stupid to care about our politics, don't worry- your elected officials do.
So what ... (Score:3)
Do not evaluate what you believe based on how many times other people say it.
Evaluate what you believe based on the facts and seek what is true.
Also, recognize the actual boundary between what you know as fact, what you suppose to be fact, and what you hope is fact ( this is a spectrum).
Just because something is written in a book, ( or on the internet or said by a movie star or Famous TV scientist, doesn't make it true.)
The real problem isn't internet trolls and marketing, it is people who are not taught to think and unconcerned about either truth or virtue.
The world is changing faster then we can adapt. (Score:3)
I browsed through the comments and mostly people say it's the society fault for being lazy and not letting inform themselves.
I think it's only partially true, in the sense that the modern technology allows to hijack human evolutionary traits, which were good for a world, which is long gone, where a smart and strong person able to protect and defend a group was truly a smart and strong person, whilst nowadays it's all engineered, the speech, the words, the makeup, clothes, the covered topics, the sleekness and smoothness of the arguments, and with the Internet even the history, achievements and reputation.
Compromising things are being erased, altered or diluted with a flood of scientifically engineered and personalized information the Internet provides, positive things are being injected, suggested or rumored - the opposite for the opponents. All done purposefully, methodically and patiently by well payed PR specialists, aka troll-farms in places like TV, radio, search results, comments, reviews, "independent" tests, and even wikipedia [fivefilters.org]. We are not perfect, prone for mistakes and suggestion [wikipedia.org], that's how brain works, mostly short sighted in planning, easily satisfied (bread and games [wikipedia.org]) and busy, with little time for thorough research between family and jobs. In the highly polarized society, with 2 parties (US) it's easy to swing the results.
There is however a hope (in my opinion) - a thorough, basic and wide education. A thorough knowledge about the history, scientific analytical methods and connections will help people make informed decisions. We cannot/should not make trolling illegal, but we can make it obsolete, by everybody asking for evidence and sources - making truth, compassion and evidence to prevail is a struggle though, which is unlikely to ever end.
We should however protect our society from foreign actors' influence over the critical part of our backbone, which are democratic elections.