If you want to have knowledge of what a deceptive world we lived in, read this. If you want to be aware of what awaits us, read this. This may be my most important text. Once, "trolls" were farm workers who wrote what they were dictated. Now troll farms are collapsing because bots are replacing humans. Today, one moderately skilled programmer could control 100,000 bots. Hence the conflicts; troll farms are no longer needed, so why pay them? I saw a troll farm from the outside. I didn't enter their structures, I didn't create a fake account with a flag in the description, and I didn't write under the teachers' strike that children are hostages. I watched from a distance, at the network, at the comments that appeared quickly, too quickly, too consistently, too often on the same issues. And at the company that functioned for years like an ordinary e-PR agency. In 2019, an investigation by Newsweek and the Reporters' Foundation showed that the Wrocław Cat@Net was not just another agency for "creating a presence on social media." It was an organized troll farm. A dozen people managed over 170 fake profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The content reached millions of recipients. The business was co-financed from PFRON, as the company employed disabled individuals and could offer clients tax deductions. From November 2015 to August 2019, Cat@Net received around 1.5 million zlotys from the State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons. From the outside, it looked innocent. An advertisement for teleworking, a student or graduate needed after journalism, working from home, "skillful influencing of recipients." Clients included large companies, small businesses, public administration, private individuals. In practice, accounts were built like characters from a series. A right-wing patriot from Żoliborz, a traditionalist, a student, a chatterbox. A photo from university, a post about lunch, and then, when a scandal erupted, a flood of comments. Teachers' strike - children as hostages, teachers are egoists in expensive scarves. TVP and Jacek Kurski - defense, image warming, attacks on critics. After the death of Paweł Adamowicz, blaming WOŚP and Owsiak, comparisons meant to shift responsibility from public television. What struck the most was not ideology, but flexibility. The farm had business accounts to slander companies, products, and brands, as well as political ones. It worked for TVP, but also for PiS politicians when they needed support before the European Parliament elections. Trolls from the same agency could publicly argue, but only according to a script. It wasn't about beliefs. It was about commission. The trails led journalists further, to the Art-Media agency, to circles associated with "Najwyższy Czas" and "Gazeta Polska," to names in the orbit of Antoni Macierewicz and Bartłomiej Misiewicz. I saw how easily a real person disappears behind an avatar, and the avatar begins to shape a debate that no one explicitly ordered, only paid for the chaos or falsehood of specific events. The troll farm didn't need us to believe in it. It was enough that we click, comment, and recognize as important and significant the voice produced on commission. PiS didn't have to paint the sign "PiS troll farm" on the office door to benefit from it. In practice, within the power camp, there was a mechanism that Newsweek's investigation exposed bluntly. It was fake accounts that coordinated hatred, defended TVP and Jacek Kurski, and attacked Owsiak, WOŚP, and Paweł Adamowicz, along with public money from PFRON that helped sustain this industry. It was a political infrastructure of lies, distorting the image of Poland as "Poland in ruins," pumping propaganda and sowing hate speech under the guise of "ordinary citizens." As long as a troll was right according to the line of power, no one in this environment asked whether the account was real. They only asked whether the post hit the opponent. #InstituteOfTruth #InstytutPrawdy #dezinformacja #trolle #media (translated)
