“…the latest Russian effort went to some lengths to appear like it was made in the United States. In addition to hiring American journalists and encouraging them to write in their own voices, the Peace Data website mixed pop culture, politics, and activism to appeal to a young audience.”

It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one who follows tech or politics that Russian agents are once again intent on using social media to interfere with the upcoming presidential election. In the New York Times, Sheera Frenkel and Julian E. Barnes write that the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency created a website called Peace Data to target progressive U.S. voters through Facebook and Twitter to convince them that Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were too right-wing. Rather than depend solely on memes and GIFs as the troll farms did in the olden days of 2016, Peace Data hired American freelance writers and paid them $75 per story.