Low-tech solutions combined with social engineering usually prove the most effective, both from the engagement perspective and the perspective of hosting expenses. A post saying “Fake news” in the comment section of Flipboard is a standard opening move, the King’s Pawn Game of trolling. Someone from the opposite political camp will likely be provoked. Does the article merely cite another article? Maybe it discusses a court decision that can’t be fake news? So what, a stupid remark is even more likely to generate a negative response — and that’s all they want!
How do they know where to post it? One way is to detect a combo of negative sentiment + mention of a particular political figure. Or, with the current partisan political environment, it could be assumed that a particular publication will be negative towards that figure most of the time or all the time, and skip the sentiment analysis altogether.
Today, several off-the-shelf platforms (sold at least to law enforcement agencies) allow managing fake persona, choreographing hardware fingerprint (SIM cards + devices) and generating text content GPT-style based on predefined profiles (e.g. radicals of a certain type). I had a chat with one of the vendors at a law enforcement trade event. I was told, “it’s a headache to manage even two sock puppet accounts. With our platform, you can manage tens of them, and generate content effortlessly”. My impression is that the TrollOps vendors still do not have access to these platforms, but it’s just a matter of time until they gain these capabilities.