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Israel does it, but maybe on a lesser scale.

Sources?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force

This is a private organization and it clearly states its goals. I have doubts about this approach anyway, but still it's very different from a secret army of government-paid propaganda agents the very idea of which is to pretend it's a voice of ordinary citizens.

While I have specific information on this group, Air America [1] was a private company, but in reality owned by the CIA.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(airline)

There's no such information about JIDF and even if there were, it's still a group that clearly states what they are doing, not a covert joint pretending to be an "internet research agency".

There's a saying: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist". The guys from the Agency are very concerned with this too. They don't exist, you know. These are just perfectly real people that happen to think Putin is not that bad and that Russia just wants to show its side of the story :)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...

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