Lithuanians have ax out for trolls

‘Elves’ target pro-Russian propaganda for removal

In this Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016 photo, Lithuanian citizen Laurynas Ragelskas talks to the Associated Press, in Vilnius, Lithuania.
In this Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016 photo, Lithuanian citizen Laurynas Ragelskas talks to the Associated Press, in Vilnius, Lithuania.

VILNIUS, Lithuania -- A battle between elves and trolls sounds like something out of The Lord of the Rings. But to Ricardas Savukynas, the battle he's fighting is no fantasy.

The 43-year-old business consultant and blogger is part of an informal Internet army of Lithuanians trying to counter what they describe as hate speech and pro-Russia propaganda.

"I am just a regular guy from Lithuania, a citizen, who once noticed that Russian propaganda is being spread in this country by huge numbers of groups on Facebook," he said. "Seeing this, I thought that it cannot be a natural thing."

Savukynas' fellow volunteers -- who have dubbed themselves "elves" -- patrol social media, coordinating their actions through Facebook or Skype to expose the fake accounts of Internet trolls, a term for those who post things that are deliberately offensive or provocative. On a busy day, Savukynas said, fellow elves report as many as 10 or 20 to get them removed.

Savukynas focuses on writing, maintaining a personal blog devoted to, among other things, deconstructing Soviet nostalgia or pulling apart conspiracy theories.

The elves do a decent job of "pinpointing some manipulation and some social networking sites," said Nerijus Maliukevicius, a researcher at Vilnius University's Institute of International Relations who studies the role of media during times of conflict. But Maliukevicius said Lithuania needs a complex strategy to counter what he describes as Kremlin propaganda.

"Elves are just one bit of this," he said.

Talk of Russian interference is bubbling in the wake of the recent U.S. election. Earlier this month, Germany's intelligence agency accused Moscow of trying to destabilize the country with propaganda and cyberattacks before its general election planned for next year.

Lithuania, which like other Baltic nations was long subject to Moscow's rule, feels those concerns more keenly than most -- all the more so after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

The elves' effort on social media is just one battlefield. News websites and broadcasters have also been drawn into the mix.

"We recognized, especially recently, that we have a pretty huge and long-lasting disinformation campaign against our society," said Tomas Ceponis, an analyst for the Lithuanian military. He said the power of propaganda is harder to quantify than tanks or planes but that it is clearly aimed at "really a very huge variety of targets."

Delfi, one of the main news sites in Lithuania, was one of them. It found its comment sections filling up with pro-Russia posts in the lead-up to Russia's annexation of Crimea, said Monika Garbaciauskaite, the editor-in-chief. Delfi now has employees who work full time to delete the most extreme messages.

The hostile propaganda has led to more aggressive action from both sides.

TV3, Lithuania's leading commercial news channel, has been repeatedly targeted by hackers, according to Sigitas Babilius, the channel's head of news. Last month, Lithuania banned Russia's RTR Planeta channel until February after a Russian politician made anti-U.S. comments deemed as "incitement to war, discord and hatred." Similar three-month bans on Russia-owned channels have been ordered in previous years.

Lithuania, meanwhile, has launched a campaign on television urging citizens to report any suspicious activity -- on the street or on the Web.

The moves rankled Moscow's ambassador to the NATO nation.

"I do not think that sticking a propaganda label on another's point of view is right," Ambassador Alexander Udaltsov said. "It's always better to use counterarguments to prove your truth, but unfortunately our Western partners lack these arguments and continue with bans of Russian TV stations."

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said he makes no apology for the bans.

"A lie is not an alternative point of view," Linkevicius said. "One can say 'it's freedom of speech; everyone can say whatever he wants.' Of course, I agree. But if it's [a] resourced propaganda machine brainwashing people, it's not just an alternative point of view. It's a weapon."

Information for this article was contributed by Raphael Satter of The Associated Press.

A Section on 12/29/2016

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