Free Republic Troll Watch

 Free Republic has long been anti-Democrat but ever since the second phase of Russia's war to conquer Ukraine started the site has taken on a decidedly anti-American posture.  The open hatred of America on Free Republic seems to me the kind of thing I'd expect from the Democrats yet here it is on Free Republic...of all places!  For instance here's a topic posted today and let's sample a few posts: https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4160815/posts?page=1 And etc.  Any more it seems that Free Republic posts have a decidedly anti-American bent to them and the site hosts a chorus of adamantly pro-Russian posters.  The only question anymore is who hates America more? Free Republic or Democratic Underground? 

 Let's get it started with this post by Jim Robinson today: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4140533/posts Please keep those donations coming in, folks. We need to bring in at least another $10K before the end of the quarter. We can do this! Let's get 'er done. [FReepathon] 03/24/23 | Jim Robinson Posted on  3/24/2023, 8:52:05 AM  by  Jim Robinson Please keep those donations coming in, folks. We need to bring in at least another $10K before the end of the quarter. We can do this! Let's get 'er done. Thank you all very much! God bless. Gosh, donations to FR are down by 20%? Well that's just sad.  Damned shame that Jim/Chris has been banning some of the most active financial supporters of FR for daring to express opinions and observations that they don't like. It's so shocking that when you ban people from your site that they stop giving you money. Amazing how that works, isn't it?  In the forums the number of old accounts with a sudden and passio...

 We've had a couple new additions to the list of probable Russian trolls.  6thavenue Since Dec 31, 2022 scan_complete Since Sep 8, 2022 captain_jonas Since Apr 18, 2022 AmericaFirst101 Since Apr 29, 2022 There's also been a very noticeable uptick in longtime accounts suddenly going active on the Ukraine topics and with obviously coordinated Russian propaganda narratives. This is since the first of January. The trend is easy to see when you start looking at the accounts, their sign up dates, their previous absence on Ukraine topics, and their sudden activity on these topics where they often evidence knowledge of all the players on these topics. The non-stop daily nuclear threats from the Russians keep getting amplified on FR.  Jim Robinson (or Chris Robinson who sometimes uses Jim's account) keeps weighing in to silence anyone who upsets the pro-Russian trolls. Yet he (Jim or Chris) is conspicuously silent over the activities of the Russian trolls.  A pro-Ukrainian po...

In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year I started tracking troll activity on Free Republic. This is because of so many accounts having a noticeably synchronized set of narratives, buzzwords, insults, and tactics. All of which I have detailed in previous pages of this blog.  And I started keeping a list of the accounts that 1) demonstrated the above characteristics and 2) did not give me any reason to exclude them from the list. It didn't mean they were a paid troll it just meant that I had no reason to remove them from my watchlist.  Case in point is AAABEST (Since Mar 21, 1998). He's an asshole. Yes, he's pro-Putin and pro-Russia but he's also such an asshole that while the Russians might be thieving, raping, murdering ghouls I still won't blame them for the sheer assholery this cretin publishes every day. I don't think he's a troll, he's just an asshole.  But back to my list. There's mostly accounts involved with Russi...

 Yesterday it would appear that JonPreston complained about my demand that Jon either produce proof of his lie that I have claimed "stolen valor" (a Federal crime) or that he apologize.  The Admin Moderator posted on the public forum for me to "Knock it off" and I obliged.  This morning I put up the following post of chatter I heard from a buddy in DC: In today’s Chatter and Unconfirmed Rumors: 1. Russian Army 20th Mechanized Division HQ (Volgograd, Volgograd Oblast) reported an explosion severe enough that communications to the HQ were impacted. There was an immediate downstream impact as communications to the 944th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment, 358th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment, 428th Separate Tank Battalion, and 487th Separate Anti-Tank Artillery Battalion were down for several hours. Indications are that the explosion was a deliberate act of sabotage. 2. Satellite pictures from earlier today show the Antonovsky Bridge is now useless for all but foot traf...

 Another FReeper sent me a string of outrageous messages that were sent to private mail by one of the typical pro-Putin trolls.  At that FReeper's request I am redacting the identities involved while still publishing the content as an example of the increasingly desperate behavior of the Putinistas as their favorite dicktator loses the war to conquer Ukraine.  This is the kind of charming, erudite, and lovely people who support Vladimir Putin: 1. videos From (REDACTED) | 08/01/2022 10:55:36 PM PDT read YOU DO REALIZE YOU STUPID CUNT I DONT WATCH YOUR DAMN VID=EOS NOR CLICK ON THE LINKS 2.FUCK YOU AND YOUR FAMILY From  (REDACTED)   | 08/01/2022 11:18:06 PM PDT replied I HOPE YOU GET RAPED BY RUSSIAN SOLDIERS 3. FUCK YOU From  (REDACTED)   | 08/01/2022 11:19:15 PM PDT read i hope you and your family die of monkeypox 4. FUCK YOU AND YOUR FAMILY From  (REDACTED)   | 08/01/2022 11:23:29 PM PDT read fuck you stupid cunt 5. fuck you ...

 The cadre of Putin fanbois on Free Republic has the peculiar commonality of making comments to and insults at other posters that all too frequently include homosexual imagery, homoerotica, and homoeroticisms.  The term globohomo appears several times per day in their discourse.  One poster E. Pluribus Unum was recently rebuked by the Administrators for posting comments at other users that were of a disturbingly detailed and graphic sexual nature. The disturbing comments were removed but not before Mr. Unum's rather informed homoeroticisms were read by myself and other users.  JonPreston seems to have been going in the same direction recently and a number of users took notice. To his credit, JonPreston did not post anything near as offensive and pornographic as what E. Pluribus Unum had posted. Still, the frequency in which JonPreston has been posting homoeroticisms was itself noteworthy.  The point being here that for a group that supposedly hates homosexual...

 I was wrong and you were right. Thank you for your contribution here. This is not about pushing an agenda but about getting to the facts.  Again, thank you. 

 Ever since the Russian War to conquer Ukraine started in February the trolls have employed a variety of tropes to forward their various narratives on Free Republic.  Neocon remains one of their favored tropes and they throw this one around like a crazed monkey throws shit at the zoo. Everyone is a neocon who doesn't support Russia's war of conquest in Ukraine.  What's truly entertaining is when they throw this at each other .  Nazi is still a popular trope although the impact of it has been lost since it's been so overused.  You should go fight for Ukraine is a recurring trope and I've found the best way to answer it is with Why don't you go fight for Russia? The pathetic little worms conspicuously run away and hide when confronted on this one.  What if Russia or China puts nukes into Canada or Mexico? is still showing up quite frequently. It's a pointless argument because neither Canada or Mexico is particularly in love with China or especially Russia...

 FBI profilers and behavioral analysts will often speak of what they call 'leakage'. This is when criminals or suspects voluntarily give up information that reveals their identities or their intentions.  In this case I'm looking at identities.  There's been a fairly frequent trend among some accounts to use conflicting pronouns and this behavior can sometimes be perceived to give away someone's actual identity.  For instance there are some folks who frequently use the pronouns We/Us/Ours and their common usage these days looks like this: We don't need to be part of NATO! What has NATO done for us?  Ukraine is not our problem! This usage intends to establish the perception that the person posting this comment is an American.  Yet quite frequently these same people will post conflicting statements that betray the person's perception that Americans are of another group than the person posting the comment.  The Americans should quit NATO and stop threateni...

 Yesterday I had a surprise interaction on Free Republic that was a textbook match for some of the patterns that I'd identified in my blog post from March 10, 2022.  I thought I'd share the analysis I posted on that discussion. (Reformatted here for clarity) ____________________________________ To:  JimSp; Jane Long; AdmSmith JimSp, Thanks for playing and at Jane’s request I’m going to dissect what you’ve done here. Let’s start with my post that you initially responded to: >To: Navy Patriot >Good. Now we need to sanction every last one of Putin’s blood relatives and every last one of his friends. > >Take their money, take their yachts, take their mansions, sell it all and hand it to the Ukrainians as reparations. > >9 posted on 4/6/2022, 10:12:49 AM by MercyFlush (I don’t  follow the science. I follow the money. ) So here I am applauding the sanctions and nowhere in this post am I discussing the legalities of the sanctions. But I am definitely suppo...

Today's Troll Watch includes specific IP addresses that have sent traffic to and from Free Republic this past week.  It's a huge amount of data that gets captured so it's a bit of a challenge to sort it all out and identify it but I've managed to identify the following IP addresses and they are absolutely from the Russian Federation .  Memo to the trolls: I'm watching you . 😈 5.178.86*77 194.190.76*41 194.190.76*44 94.100.180*197 213.180.204*90 141.101.196*233 151.236.127*145 37.18.24*16 Caution to anyone trying to play with these IP addresses is that they may also host malware or other active defenses that can harm or compromise your computers. Thus I have replaced one of the octet markers with an asterisk to prevent casual or accidental connection to these IP addresses.  That is all. 

 Today's information is not specifically about trolls but about the web traffic on Free Republic.  A little disclaimer first: This information is not sourced from anyone who has anything to do with Free Republic. It is all open sourced data that anyone with some technical skill can obtain on their own.  From January 1, 2022 to April 1, 2022 Free Republic had 9,977,000 unique visits. It is a very busy site!  46.10% of the visitors were using desktop computers and 53.90% were using mobile devices.  Free Republic is globally ranked as the world's 20,535th busiest web site.  Free Republic is the USA's 4,001st busiest web site.  Free Republic has no public facing subdomains.  Free Republic had 321,548 unique visitors in March 2022. Only 29.34% of these visited the site once. The rest visited numerous times with an average visit of 11 minutes and 12 seconds.  In March 96.19% of the unique visitors to Free Republic came from IP addresses in the Unit...

 Today in the Troll Watch the first thing to think about are two of the more popular troll tactics.  When you weigh in on a post with an opinion or facts that counter the troll's designated narrative their two most favored tactics to distract you are these: 1. On off topic response typically coupled with confrontational questions whose intent is to get you arguing about anything other than the topic on hand.  Like if there's a topic about Washington apples and you make an observation about how tasty those apples are a troll is likely to respond with something along the lines of: Oh yeah? Well what about what happened to the Branch Covidians? They had an orange tree and you pro-apple NAZIS murdered all of their children! Do you hate people who grow oranges? You want to murder their children, don't you?  And if you allow yourself to get sucked in you'll now be defending yourself from irrational accusations, you'll be discussing oranges in a topic about apples, and if ...

 Observations for today's Troll Watch: 1. Since I started doing this the identified trolls refuse to engage with me anymore. It's been a glaringly obvious trend where they refuse to engage with me and will even cease posting on selected topics if I weigh in.  2. One troll recently tried to misconstrue what it is to be a 'sleeper' troll. He claimed 'sleepers' were new accounts when in fact the definition of a sleeper is one who appears normal over a period of years until activated for a mission.  3. Trolls do not donate to Free Republic. None of the trolls on my observation list donate to Free Republic. Not even one of them.  Individually this means little, of course, but when 100% of the accounts I observe fail to show up as donating to FR it becomes a statistical improbability especially as several of these accounts are ten or more years old.  That is all. 

 Today in the Troll Watch the two primary narratives are as follows: 1. The variations on the theme of "Why don't you go to Ukraine and fight for them?" continues but has started to decline. Eighty four such identified posts were made on March 14, 2022 and that declined to twenty-three such posts on March 17, 2022.  2. The previous variations on the hypothetical question of Mexico or Canada deploying Russian or Chinese nuclear weapons has declined precipitously. Forty-three such identified posts were made on March 14, 2022 and that declined to twelve on March 17, 2022.  A new narrative has surfaced in which the West is being assigned responsibility for the potential use of nuclear weapons by Putin and Russia. The contention being that the West may 'force' Russia to use nuclear weapons if the West does not bow to Putin's demands.  A potential narrative is developing in which Poland is being promoted as a new threat against Russia and also being promoted as a ro...

Welcome to the first issue of Troll Watch!  Today in the Troll Watch there are three existing tactics and narratives in use by the Trolls: 1. Beginning the day before the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and slowly declining in popularity are the variations on the Troll narrative that Ukraine isn't a real country . The argument tends to circle around historic Russian claims but can also veer off into nonsense about how Ukraine never registered their borders with some UN agency.  2. Next up are variations on the theme of Why don't you go over to Ukraine and fight for them? Naturally this narrative is intended to shame and silence anyone who supports the Ukrainians in their fight against the invading Russians. However, the counterpoint is that none of the pro-Russian trolls are volunteering to go fight and die for Putin.  3. The most recent Troll narrative is one where a hypothetical question is posed that asks how the US would feel if Russia or China deployed nuclear wea...

  This blog is an offshoot of my ad hoc efforts on Free Republic so my second post will be the rough information I've posted so far on my Free Republic about page: One of my side projects this past year (2021-2022) has been identifying troll accounts. Troll accounts come in a few different versions but first let’s identify who is NOT a troll: 1. New accounts are not automatically troll accounts. They do deserve scrutiny as they learn how to navigate FR but that does not automatically make them trolls. 2. People who freely identify as being from a foreign country are not trolls. Trolls pretend to be one thing in order to claim credibility as they spread propaganda. Yes, they can still be trolls but I give them a lower score on my troll index if they admit to being from a country they promote. Next up are the varieties of trolls to be found operating around FR. For the purposes of my ad-hoc research it’s easier to identify longer term trolls than it is new trolls. Given that FReepers...

 Firstly, this is a work in progress.  This is an effort to identify paid trolls (generally political agitators for China and Russia) who promote propaganda for governments specifically on the Free Republic forums. The information gathered and presented here is publicly accessible and no one needs to join Free Republic to find the same information that is presented here.  I do not have any kind of special information nor do I pretend to have any such information.  This blog is in no way connected to the owner, administrators, or moderators of the Free Republic web forum.  The ultimate purpose of my effort is to come up with a reasonably accurate set of criteria that anyone can use to identify paid trolls on their own.  A side purpose is to discourage paid trolls by tracking them and publicizing their narrative talking points, tactics, strategies, and perhaps even specific goals.