Internet brigades

The Internet brigades ()
Since the existence of Internet brigades is often officially denied, such activities may be defined as "black", covert or false flag operations (or "active measures" according to Soviet terminology).

Internet police teams in mainland China
It has been reported

Internet brigades in Russia
First publication
This alleged phenomenon in RuNet was first described in 2003 by journalist Anna Polyanskaya (a former assistant to assassinated Russian politician Galina Starovoitova), historian Andrey Krivov and political activist Ivan Lomako. They claimed the appearance of organized and fairly professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet. One of their observations was that prior to 1998-1999 about 70% of audience of Russian Internet were people of liberal views, composed of Russian middle class and people in emigration; but already in 2003 according to authors there were about 60-80% of "totalitarian" posts at Russian forums. They ascribe the phenomenon to activity of Internet teams which allegedly appeared in 1999 and were organized by FSB.

Behavior
According to Polyanskaya and her colleagues, the behavior of people from the Internet brigades has distinct features, some of which are the following:

Yusupovskiy's points included:
*He supposed, that officeers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems, than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants.
*There is difference between "dislike of hegemonic policy of the United States" at Russian forums and "quite friendly attitude towards usual Americans". Aggression and xenophobia doesn't characterize one side but is a common place of polemics, well met not only among Russian patriots, but also Russian emigrants from US, Israel, or other countries.
*Change of attitude of virtual masses in 1998-1999 could be caused by Russian financial collapse which "crowned liberal decade", rather than "mysterious bad guys".
*Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols or simply unliberal students; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.
*According to Yusupovskiy, authors treat "independence of public opinion" in spirit of irreconcilable antagonism with "positive image of Russia".

LiveJournal fighters
A member of National Bolshevik Party Roman Sadykhov reported about "LiveJournal fighters", directed and paid from the Kremlin and instructions given to them by Vladislav Surkov, a close aide of Vladimir Putin Surkov allegedly called Livejournal "a very important sector of work" and said that people's brains must be "nationalized" . He instructed "LiveJournal fighters" that

:"We are losing in the Internet in that respect. It is always easier to break down things than to do something positive. What you are doing are jokes and minor infractions. Not only methods, but also goals must be radical. We must blow this romantics out of them . It is important not only to protect the authorities - this is understood, but we need to attract young people who can work creatively in the Internet. This is an important communication place of young people. Make them interested in conversations with you." He wrote: "It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".

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