Iran In 2018, a group of
Reddit moderators uncovered a network of Iranian-affiliated websites and user accounts spreading pro‑Iran and anti‑Western narratives. Also in 2018, Twitter released over 10 million tweets from 4,570 accounts linked to Russian and Iranian state-backed troll operations to help researchers study how these actors used the platform to influence public opinion, including during the U.S. presidential election and the Brexit referendum. In 2024, a report by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center showed that the Iranian government had launched cyberattacks promoting AI‑supported fake news sites aimed at polarizing swing‑state voters.
Brazil It has been widely suspected that Brazil's former president
Jair Bolsonaro and his family created troll farms to promote support for his government policies and to attack and harass rivals through the internet. These fake accounts and bots are possibly controlled by an office inside one of Bolsonaro's government buildings led by Jair's son
Carlos known as 'office of hate', which is suspected to have created more than a thousand fake accounts to support Bolsonaro's government. Troll accounts have also been linked to misinformation related to the
COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, as Bolsonaro's government is known for having adopted a denialist and weak posture regarding the pandemic.
China The "
50 Cent Party" consists of paid Chinese bureaucrats who cheerlead for the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or try to change the subject during online discussions.
India India's ruling party
BJP has a large number of online supporters who support its agenda and attack political rivals. Their methods were recorded by investigative journalist
Swati Chaturvedi, who described them as a "digital army" in her book on the subject, ''I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP's Digital Army''.
Malaysia In 2022,
Meta Platforms announced that it has removed hundreds of Facebook and Instagram accounts that were directly linked with the
Royal Malaysia Police (RMP), as they were used as part of a troll farm to disseminate propaganda and manipulate public discourse about the Malaysian police and the government. Meta added that such actions were against its policy of "coordinated inauthentic behaviour".
Nicaragua In November 2021, Facebook reported that it closed accounts, groups and pages in Facebook and Instagram linked to a troll farm operated by the
Sandinista National Liberation Front, the ruling party in
Nicaragua.
Philippines The Philippines has been called "patient zero in the global disinformation epidemic." Studies into the country's troll farms found that political campaigns pay trolls $1,000 to $2,000 per month to create multiple fake social media accounts to post political propaganda and attack critics. A 2017 study found that the
political campaign of President Rodrigo Duterte had spent $200,000 to hire online trolls.
Duterte admitted to hiring trolls for his
2016 political campaign. Since then, trolling behaviour supportive of Duterte has been traced back to taxpayer-funded
government institutions.
Russia The
Russian web brigades, including
Internet Research Agency, became known in the late 2010s for the
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Turkey The ruling
Justice and Development Party of Turkey has a troll farm commonly known as
AK Trolls.
Vietnam Ukraine Ukrainian
oligarchs and politicians "troll factories" for their business and political purposes. Journalists from
Radio Liberty note that the services of trolls, among others, were used by such oligarchs as
Rinat Akhmetov and
Ihor Kolomoyskyi. In the fall of 2019, two large-scale journalistic investigations about “troll factories” in Ukraine were published. ==Non government entities==