organization of discord. the organizers were thousands of miles away in st. petersburg, russia, working for a secretive organization which according to a recent u.s. indictment had a strategic goal to sew discord in the u.s. political system. it its name, the internet research agency, dubbed the kremlin troll factory by former employees who smuggled out these rare cell phone images. in 2016, cnn spoke to a russian journalist who went undercover as an internet troll there. translator: the u.s. elections are the key issue for the kremlin. and, of course, russia has invested a lot of effort into them. that s why the troll factories are working. i have no doubt. reporter: it was during the russian backed rebellion in ukraine in 2014 that evidence first emerged of pro kremlin troll factories filled with bloggers paid to spread false
journalist who went undercover as a troll there. translator: the elections are a key aspect of the russian kremlin and that is why the troll factories are working, i have no doubt. reporter: it was during the russian-backed rebellion in ukraine in 2014 that evidence first appeared with information of paid bloggers to spread false information online. and this is the russian oligarch who according to the indictment bankroll bankrolled the operation known as yevgeny prigoshin also known as putin s chef. he told the russian media, they see what they want to see.
campaign that at this point, going on now 18 months hearing about russia collusion, there has been no collisionprovision . when alleged from the senior levels of the probe or doj. that said, we have to see what happens going forward and into the future. i would also note that in the big problem is that people are looking at the troll factories and interference in the election and saying, we need to stop it. there is reporting behind maybe a problem for the midterm election. had he stopped people from creating fake facebook accounts and spreading information is false and you do not like? it is difficult to do. no one has gone beyond russia s interfering is the massive problem for us the internet is a global thing. trying to track down sock puppets and trolls is a big job for even facebook and google. the us government will have a tangible challenge in dealing with this. buck sexton, thank you. the president visits parkland, florida meeting with
natasha, facebook is trying to show it s taking this seriously. but too little too late seeing as it doesn t have a plan in place for the next set of elections? right. this is essentially a pr for facebook. there are a lot of problems with it namely that it only deals with accounts that were operated out of the st. petersburg troll factory, the russian internet research agency when there are actually dozens of other troll factories out there who were producing this russian propaganda on twitter, on facebook, on all sorts of social media platforms. the other problem with it is this is not going to allow everyone who was exposed to see if they were actually engaging with it. only those people who followed the accounts, liked them is going to be the thing.
the invasion of crimea, you guys got to do much more. you don t understand the power of russian propaganda. she actually knew about that and unfortunately the irany being that she was then effected by it. what the russians did around the annexation of crimea, on social media, using bots and honey pots and troll factories was what they did here in 2016 and in many ways that was a trial run for what they did here and if we had been smart enough and realized, wow, the signs are there, we probably could have done more. i know that s a debate that s gone on why did we miss that? well, people were nervous i was not in the room where the decision s made but people thought mrs. clinton were going to win and they thought if president obama came out and said we re being hacked by the russians, it would look like he was putting his finger on the