NYT: Saudi Arabia authorities finance their own "troll factory"

Saudi Arabia has its own “troll factory”, which conducts a campaign on intimidation of opposition citizens on social networks. This was written by The New York Times with reference to seven sources studying the organization’s work.

The interlocutors of the publication claim that the organization was created on the initiative of the Crown Prince Muhammad ibn Salman and his advisers. Hundreds of people work in it, each of them receives about $ 3,000 per month.

Employees of the Troll Factories write on Twitter and leave messages in public chats in Telegram and WhatsApp. Among the topics they raised are the war in Yemen, a violation of women's rights in Saudi Arabia. They also criticized the deceased journalist Jamal Khashkaji.

The New York Times also received documents indicating that the McKinsey consulting company helped Saudi Arabia to determine the influential Saudis who opposed the government line in their Twitter accounts. Subsequently, the persons mentioned in the report were imprisoned and attacked by trolls.

McKinsey said that they did this study for internal use, and not for any state body.

“We are horrified by the fact that this could be incorrectly used,” said the representative of McKinsey.

For the first time, the “Trolls Factories” were spoke in connection with the Russian Agency for Internet research, which is financed by the Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s cook”. In February 2018, the Federal Court of the American District of Colombia accused the Russian “troll factory” of intervention in the US presidential election in 2016.

Read more about Prigozhin's activities in the material Prigozhinsky millions: as the chief of Putin created the army of the Kremlin trolls