How Russia's IRA troll factories tweeted a torrent of fabricated narratives against the US Women's March and its leaders for 18 months, fracturing the movement
As American feminists came together in 2017 to protest Donald Trump, Russia's disinformation machine set about deepening the divides among them.
Women's March organizers spent 18 months absorbing internally-directed attacks they could not distinguish from genuine activist criticism, fracturing leadership cohesion at the moment the movement was trying to mobilize.
Twitter and Facebook are shown to have failed as detection layers for this campaign, since the accounts were laundered through authentic-looking American identities rather than obvious bot patterns.
Researchers gain leverage from released archives like the 10M-tweet dump, turning post-hoc forensic analysis into a standing check on platform claims about influence operations.
Third-order effects
If influence operations keep targeting social movements rather than only ballots, the defensive perimeter has to expand from election integrity teams to continuous monitoring of civic organizing spaces — a structural cost shift onto the platforms themselves.
Identity laundering (VPNs, stolen IDs, payment rails) becomes the core battleground: whoever controls real-identity verification effectively sets the ceiling on how convincing foreign influence campaigns can be.
The trend: State-backed disinformation is expanding from electoral interference toward sustained manipulation of domestic social movements, forcing platforms and researchers to treat influence operations as permanent infrastructure rather than episodic events.
Disinformation can be most effective when building on already existing frictions within a society This is great reporting, on one hand looking at how information spread and at the same time laying out the proper context for the critique https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter…
@kenroth
Kenneth Roth on x
Russian state-sponsored trolls seek to amplify the social divisions within democratic societies to divert attention from (and portray in a less harsh light) Putin's autocratically imposed uniformity within Russia. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@thegarance
Garance Franke-Ruta on x
Russian trolls “posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners. But one message performed better with audiences than any other. It singled out....Ms. Sarsour” https://www.nytimes.com/…
@noupside
Renee DiResta on x
The central question they picked at, for years - and tbc this action began long before the 2016 campaign - might be phrased as “who is America for?” What is American identity. How can all of these different people experiences co-exist.
@nytimes
@nytimes on x
As American feminists came together in 2017 for the Women's March, Russia's disinformation machine set about deepening their divides, with troll factories and the military intelligence service putting a sustained effort into discrediting the movement. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@justinhendrix
Justin Hendrix on x
How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women's March Out of Lock Step So sorry @lsarsour had to endure being a Kremlin target... yet not surprised Putin regarded her as a threat to his white supremacist alignment with Donald Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/...
@bostonjoan
@bostonjoan on x
This is by far the best article I have ever read on the aftermaths of Russian disinformation campaigns. It's got all the details and tells the story from the point of view of the impacted. Bravo! @EllenBarryNYT https://twitter.com/...
@noupside
Renee DiResta on x
It is not sowing division by saying “you should hate other group X.” It leverages real grievances, and as they improved over time, they simply began to pick up the real propaganda of homegrown American hyperpartisan media. Social media is great for that kind of content.
@veenadubal
Veena Dubal on x
This incredible piece on how Russian Trolls worked to destroy unity in the Women's March by focusing specifically on @lsarsour is terrifying. In addition to fracturing a movement ideologically, they created intense, dangerous forms of harassment. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@dmcrawford
@dmcrawford on x
This NYT on Russian backed trolls and the Women's March makes clear something I've thought for a while: American divisions around race, gender, etc are a perfect opportunity for foreign govts to wreck havoc. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@ericmgarcia
Eric Michael Garcia on x
“Feminism was an obvious target, because it was viewed as a “Western agenda,” and hostile to the traditional values that Russia represented” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@tomgara
Tom Gara on x
The Linda Sarsour parts of this story seem to downplay the realness and bipartisan influence of the American voices who've been talking this way about her for the last decade+ https://twitter.com/...
@danpatterson
Dan Patterson on x
At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women's March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans. https://www.nytimes.com/... via @nytim…
@sarahditum
Sarah Ditum on x
I don't doubt that Russia got stuck into divisions in the women's march (including the trans stuff), but having someone like this in charge is definitely letting Putin play on easy https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@noupside
Renee DiResta on x
An interesting new article ab Russia's Internet Research Agency ‘sowing social division’ is out today. I want to point something out that adds some complexity but is key to understanding how this works: the IRA ran pro-Muslim & pro-feminist accts too. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@aaronjmate
@aaronjmate on x
NYT front page: “Russian Trolls Helped Fracture the Women's March.” Latest in a never-ending series on the mystical powers of “Russian Trolls.” https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@davidfolkenflik
David Folkenflik on x
Intense NYT dive into how Russian trolls exploited existing fissures to crack apart effort to channel vast anti-Trump feminist sentiment into a movement at dawn of Trump yrs https://twitter.com/...
@ggreenwald
Glenn Greenwald on x
As usual, once you dig deep into articles about nefarious Kremlin bots, the numbers are so *trivial as to be laughable*, and they're forced to admit these conflicts long pre-date Russian trolls. Look at these minuscule numbers. The NYT will likely give itself another Pulitzer.🍾 h…
@jeffhorwitz
Jeff Horwitz on x
Good thread. Alternate framing of this: Trolls always pour gas on fires, but the bigger problem was the Women's March was born overnight, lacked structure and hadn't vetted its leadership. This seems almost definitionally true of online movements. see the BLM fraud suit. https://…
@professorshaw
Tamsin Shaw on x
Hands up if you were told you were a crazy Russophobe for saying stuff like this was happening 🙋🏽♀️ https://twitter.com/...
@ggreenwald
Glenn Greenwald on x
This unhinged NYT article and the cheering of it by the usual establishment mavens perfectly illustrates both the idiocy and utility of blaming US social strife on a few dozen Russians bots in St. Petersburg. US elites are great! Anger in the US is due to Kremlin manipulation: ht…
@aaronjmate
@aaronjmate on x
A sad irony: the Women's March was an early sign of grassroots opposition to Trump. Russiagate destroyed that by channelling “resistance” into Russia conspiracy theories & passive “Mueller Time” spectating. Fitting that Russiagate propaganda is now deployed against the March too.…
@stuartpstevens
Stuart Stevens on x
Russia is at war with democracy. In America they have had shocking success manipulating many conservatives into dismissing their attacks as a “Russian hoax.” Many of these same conservatives parrot variations of Putin talking points on Ukraine. https://twitter.com/...
@nicoleperlroth
@nicoleperlroth on x
Read this. It's the same playbook over and over again. The goal is division and distraction. As long as the U.S. is tied up in its own culture wars (and it doesn't take much to inflame them), we are too divided and distracted to pay attention to whatever Putin is up to. https://t…
@noupside
Renee DiResta on x
Propaganda isn't always about persuasion. It's about activation. Finding the people who already hold the belief and throwing gas on the fire. And so even as some of their accounts worked to opportunistically undermine this movement...others positioned themselves as feminists.
@onekade
@onekade on x
This is wild. Apparently a lot of the hate directed at Linda Sarsour in 2017 came from Russia's Internet Research Agency, the government propaganda effort. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@scotthortonshow
Scott Horton on x
Evidence presented: zero https://www.nytimes.com/...
@johannes_ernst
Johannes Ernst on x
“If those thousand tweets hit a division between the groups that matter, if they open and allow that division, it's no longer a crack. It becomes a valley.” — great quote by @digitalsista. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@ddknyt
David D. Kirkpatrick on x
This is a must read, a sophisticated treatment of a vital subject by one of the best writers I know of: https://twitter.com/...
@jh_swanson
Joel S. on x
This investigative report really deserves a lot more attention. Essentially, Russian trolls exploited pro-Israel groups' concern about a Palestinian activist's involvement in the Women's March, in order to fracture that movement and undermine its effectiveness against Trump. http…
@parkermolloy
Parker Molloy on x
Very interesting article 👀 Really hammers home how online troll movements can create a controversy and wait for people unaffiliated with the troll group to start repeating the lines, and make it all seem organic. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@dangillmor
Dan Gillmor on x
This NYT story, about Russia's trolling campaign to divide women marching against Trump's misogyny, is a reminder: When we encounter things online that trigger anger, we may well be targets of disinformation specialists. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@ellenbarrynyt
Ellen Barry on x
After the 2017 Women's March, Russian trolls began testing out narratives critical of the movement. They posed as Black women alienated from white feminism. As conservative women. As jeering men. Then they found a far more effective line of attack. https://www.nytimes.com/...