Sweatshops Producing Hate and Division

In a squat gray building on Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia, hundreds of young employees once filed into offices, not to build apps or take tech support calls—but to impersonate Americans online.

This was the headquarters of the Internet Research Agency (IRA)—the world’s most notorious troll farm.

These workers weren’t hackers. They didn’t need to be. All they had to do was write posts, push memes, and comment like your neighbor. Or your cousin. Or your fellow veteran.

The Business of Division

Founded in 2013 by Kremlin-linked oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, the IRA operates like a PR firm for chaos. U.S. intelligence agencies, the Mueller Report, and multiple Senate investigations have confirmed:

• It ran thousands of fake accounts, mostly pretending to be Americans.

• It manipulated millions of users during the 2016 U.S. election.

• It continues to exploit social fractures to this day.

These troll farms are not interested in persuasion. They’re interested in confusion. Their job is to make the American public angry, suspicious, and divided—so divided that we no longer know what’s real, or who to trust.

2016: The Election That Made Them Famous

Let’s talk verified examples.

• Blacktivist: A Facebook page that appeared to promote Black civil rights but was operated by the IRA. It gained over 300,000 followers, outpacing the official Black Lives Matter page at one point.

• Heart of Texas: A fake pro-gun page with more than 250,000 followers—also created by the IRA.

• Trolls organized real-world protests in the U.S.—often with opposing rallies in the same city, at the same time. One side thought they were protesting racism. The other thought they were defending Confederate monuments. Both were being manipulated by the same Russian operation.

The New Warfront: Health, War, and Grief

Since 2020, the content has evolved.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian troll farms spread vaccine misinformation, including claims that Western vaccines caused infertility or carried microchips.

• Following the invasion of Ukraine, Russian trolls pushed fake videos and conspiracies about biolabs and Ukrainian war crimes.

• In veteran communities, trolls now seed anti-government distrust—often repackaged in emotional appeals tied to patriotism or mental health.

Meet the Trolls

According to whistleblower Lyudmila Savchuk, who infiltrated the IRA in 2015, workers were paid monthly salaries, received bonuses based on engagement, and followed daily quotas for fake posts and comments.

Each operator juggled dozens of fake personas. Some pretended to be veterans. Others posed as young activists. Their content was scheduled, tracked, and evaluated—just like any social media job.

But their product wasn’t awareness. It was division.

“We wrote about politics, race, religion. We pretended to be people we were not. We were told to make people argue,” Savchuk told The Guardian in a 2015 exposé.

Why It Matters Now

You’re not imagining it. Social media is angrier, more chaotic, and more confusing than it used to be. And much of that is by design.

Troll farms don’t create hatred. They exploit it. They don’t need to convince you—they just need to make you stop believing anyone else. And in that silence, disinformation wins.

Coming Up Next:

Part 2 – The Playbook: Tactics, Targets, and Timing
We’ll break down the psychological techniques troll farms use, the audiences they prioritize, and how they time their disinformation strikes for maximum impact.