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The Russian trolling agency

In the NYT Magazine, Adrian Chen reports on the hoaxes that often target American communities from a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia. Meet the trolls who work at The Agency.

The Columbian Chemicals hoax was not some simple prank by a bored sadist. It was a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures precisely chosen to generate maximum attention.