I haven't found sources or people being confirmed as CTR shills after the election was over. If you could provide some I'd appreciate these. I agree shills can be a problem but I haven't found conclusive evidence of their influence.
I disagree. CTR was known for promotion, shilling, just as advertisers are, but people in Russian employ were known for disruption. They aren't pushing the merits of Donald Trump, Marine LePen, etc., as much as they're fomenting discord through fake news and aggressive bias.
I guess where we're in disagreement, though, and this is something that was in discussion at the senate hearings in terms of "unwitting agents" or put less delicately, "useful idiots" that will follow along with dangerous patterns that might have their source in extremely negative astroturfing/forum-sliding/shilling, but which take on a life of their own.
We have clear evidence that disinformation campaigns and active measures are being used, but the reason they work isn't because initially a bunch of Russian teenagers are employed to push false and dangerous narratives. They work because they get picked up by totally sincere people who have an emotional reason for perpetuating them, but which reject any kind of rational discussion around them.
As a use case: An army of (shills/trolls) pushes a completely fake story titled, "Police Find 19 White Female Bodies In Freezers With ‘Black Lives Matter’ Carved Into Skin." (this was an actual, viral fake news headline), and times it properly to get it to certain key environments.
Once it's there, it gets perpetuated by people who are sincere, who are continuing the narrative for emotional, irrational reasons ("this fits my world view, it angers me, it makes me feel good to bring it to light"). When people respond that it is a fake story, those people are responded to with hostility, name-calling and anger.
At this point, you have a shift from shilling to trolling, but the original source hits a particular emotional note that posting things like, "Hillary Clinton is the most experienced and qualified candidate for president EVER" or "Hey guys! I just learned about this great new product, totally randomly! Let's talk about it!"
Both are problems. The latter are annoying, and with a little bit of savvy, easily identified and ignored. The former is outright dangerous and attacks one of the foundations of a democratic, free society.
>I guess where we're in disagreement, though, [...] "useful idiots" that will follow along with dangerous patterns that might have their source in extremely negative astroturfing/forum-sliding/shilling, but which take on a life of their own.
I'm not sure where the disagreement is; gaining sincere support is the whole point. Shills spread plenty of false anti-bernie things.
I think you should take a second look at what I said. Yes, there were anti-Bernie things, and I say this as someone whose politics are much closer to Bernie's than they will ever be to Hillary's.
But the nature of what Putin is doing is radically different, for the reasons I outlined. Misrepresenting an essay that Bernie wrote 50 years ago, for instance, is dirty politics for sure, but I don't put it on the same level as spreading a fake story about Muslim immigrants or black people, especially in a country like ours that has a very dangerous history of racial populism.
Add to this that those whipping up these deep social divisions aren't even American, and you have yourself a problem with a much greater significance than playing dirty in a primary battle.
If someone wants to be an ass whatever, but CTR and similar seems like a much more serious problem to me.