Likewise, I scored only 4/8, but it may be an indication of my relative insulation from the type of trolley accounts shown. Never plan to create a Twitter or Instagram account and I keep a very limited number of friends in Facebook. Even my LinkedIn account is rarely visited and my connections are strictly people I have actually met or worked with.
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7/8
I love this tool. If I had anyone who I was worried about falling for trolls online I would definitely send them the link. Luckily I have managed to keep my parents off Facebook altogether and I can’t think of any other relatives right now who are in danger to succumbing to something like this.
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“Troll” and “bot” are two different things, and neither of them is (necessarily) “posting under a fabricated/anonymous identity”
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Expressing a strong opinion about something, even monomaniacally, under whatever identity, is hardly uncommon on the internet. It doesn’t matter if the person is “Russian Troll” or a good old fashioned American gamer gater in his mom’s basement
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the point of Russian troll farms is not content, its volume. Going over each trollish post in painstaking detail to determine if it is “real” is simply pouring your time & attention down a drain. It is wrestling with a pig. It is giving a troll exactly and precisely what it wants
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I did quite well: 7 out of 8.
My strategy was to cover the screen with one hand, scroll to the bottom and click an answer at random.
Seems to work well for many things in life.
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8/8! I have beautiful system help you also score perfect on Russian bot test! Never fail. Many also lose pounds and get rich with SUPER system. IT EASY! Just send Bitcoin. Be WINNER!
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For me it was the cute little cop bitmojis (or whatever they’re called) in the profile. No self-respecting cop would use those.
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I got a six out of eight. The two I got wrong, I guessed troll, when it was real account. I guess I leaned on the troll answer a bit heavily.
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At the end of the day, we are all trolls, living under our own little bridges
As a media literacy educator, I appreciate the intent behind Spot the Troll. However I think it sends the wrong message that you can identify a bot or a troll just by looking at their feed. That is incorrect.
Russian bots are getting increasingly sophisticated and nuanced, often just ripping a real person’s entire online history and reposting it, with misinformation and disinformation mixed in. You can’t just scan their Twitter or Instagram account and see if they are fake or not. You have to actually do some lateral reading, e.g. open another browser tab and look into claims made on the feed and see if they are fact-based and reliable.
That’s the only way to get an 8/8… for real.
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Me too. Smelling bullshit a mile away is one of my superpowers.
And I’m happy that accuracy of claims continues to be my favoured primary filter even if I struggle with whether or not the inaccurate claim comes from a conscious intention to manipulate.
FWIW I’m an outlier as I’ve never opened a Twitter account and I closed my Facebook account due to today’s concerns back in 2012!
I enjoyed the thought-provoking aspect of the exercise though and learned a thing or two.
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I’m surprised that they didn’t point to use of language as a tell. Not just particular kinds of grammatical errors, but patterns of expression. That’s one of my go-to strategies in assessing the validity of online people.
Since when did they hijack the word Troll? Automated Twitter bots aren’t Trolls. A troll has always been the internet equivalent of the person who farts in the elevator, and enjoys the response they get.
For example, if a conversation is focused on one thing, they might find a detail in that discussion that is tangential and then rant about it! Lame attempt to subvert internet-culture labels is LAME!
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Yes, I got as far as “I think this probably is a real person, but I also think he’s still a troll”, and the “right” answer was “he’s not a troll because we know he’s a real person”, and I gave up.
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“The lady doth protest too much , methinks”
Going non-binary gender fluid on that quote “Ken”… If you really are a “Ken” 
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I believe this account is a troll… 1/1
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That was the reason I only got 7/8. Mike Adams may not be a fake account, but they are a trolley.
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