Network clogged

The Young Guard of United Russia is going to launch a system for sending political spam on social networks, Kommersant writes. A special website ka-2.ru, established for these needs, is currently undergoing testing. The main tool in political struggle is hashtags, that is, keywords or phrases by which messages can be searched on Twitter. A certain interlocutor of the newspaper from the Moscow headquarters of the Young Guard frankly admits that work will be carried out in two directions: either bringing their own hashtags into trends, or “littering with spam (he said so - “EZH”) those topics promoted by the opposition.” . Thus, we see that pro-Kremlin youth see their high task as primarily littering their opponents with spam. As a matter of fact, their senior comrades in the Duma, for example, are doing approximately the same thing. Only their spam also has specific legislative and repressive consequences. Well, everyone starts small.

The newspaper says that in recent days, pro-Kremlin activists registered on ka-2.ru have been promoting their hashtags, but not dedicated to any improvement of life in the country, even if these were Potemkin villages, but to discrediting the opposition that came out for the march January 13 against the ban on American adoption. Their hashtags were called #Results of the March of Pedophiles, #March of Scoundrels, #Udaltsov Burned, #KSO Gathering of Crooks and #For Zheleznyak. (The “#” sign precedes any hashtag; Deputy Speaker of the Duma Sergei Zheleznyak is one of the main propagandists of the law and fighters against non-systemic opposition, but does not see that the march was attended, in addition to the American liberal hirelings he hates, by ordinary citizens who know what adoption is like first-hand, as well as representatives of public organizations working with children and orphanages.) Some of these glorious hashtags managed to become trending on Russian Twitter.

Kommersant even managed to find out that the website ka-2.ru was created by Arseny Shcheltsin from Nizhny Novgorod, who repeatedly organized various Young Guard events. In November 2011, a scandal occurred: a report appeared on the Internet about how some specially created propaganda teams tried to promote United Russia on social networks and on Nizhny Novgorod forums. Shcheltsin then confirmed to the newspaper that he was the creator of the resource in order to “promote certain content on social networks for a fee.” True, he later retracted his words, stated that he had nothing to do with the Young Guard and did not pay anyone money for promoting hashtags in support of the authorities, and then completely blocked the site for new comers.