Screenshot of July 11, 2023 Instagram post by the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić reaiding “I love Serbia and Serbian Progressive Party the most in the world! Yes, I'm a SNS bot! …Me too, Me too…” Fair use. This article by Borjan Gagovski was originally published by Meta.mk. An edited version is republished here under a content-sharing agreement between Global Voices and Metamorphosis Foundation. Serbian “bots” = human trolls The term “bot” in contemporary Serbian parlance doesn't refer to short for “robot” or some automated/AI application, but to human beings: internet trolls working for political parties who manually operate anonymous or fake social media profiles, engaging in promotion of the party and its leaders or targeting opponents with smear campaigns and online harassment. In Serbia, the country considered epicenter of disinformation in the Western Balkans region, a great debate is ongoing nowadays. It started when the names and the profiles of over 14,500 people believed to be members of the troll farm controlled by ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), called “bots” were publicly revealed. Starting from July 9, Dragan Vidaković, who goes by the nickname Mrki, meaning “brown,” has been using his Twitter and Facebook profiles, alongside various hosting platforms, to disseminate an excel spreadsheet with lists of names allegedly associated with various X profiles that had been promoting the ruling party in Serbia, some of whom were also involved in the online harassment of dissenters. Vucic has been running a troll farm in Serbia and the list of almost 15.000 fake accounts linked to real people was leaked last week. They have been targeting Serbian citizens, the opposition… I’ve been warning about these accounts for years. However, don’t forget these accounts… https://t.co/vHiaYDlTo7 — Ivana Stradner 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@ivanastradner) July 10, 2023 Meta.mk News Agency contacted Vidaković who provided a statement with more details. This information cannot be verified by an independent source, but subsequent reactions indeed indicated that large number of listed persons are actually political party “bots.” These new revelations also corroborated previous stories about the SNS “bot” network from 2019 and 2020, after Twitter announced it took down 8,558 accounts engaging in “inauthentic coordinated activity” to “promote Serbia’s ruling party and its leader.” Screenshot of the leaked list of SNS bots contained names an surnames, county, municipality and account info. (Personal data removed for privacy reasons.) In statement for Meta.mk, Vidaković stated that he paid EUR 15,000 (approximately USD 16,540) for the list, with money collected from the Serbian diaspora. Allegedly, the list was purchased from one of the heads of a SNS IT teams. The organization of the SNS “bot” network seems to mirror party hierarchy, with so-called IT teams associated with regional or municipal party branches. They orchestrate operations by relaying instructions from party headquarters to the “bots” via instant messaging apps like Viber, and monitor their performance via special apps like The Castle. The published list divides the “bots” into three categories: “super special,” “fans,” and “haters.” Vidaković explains that the “super specials” are the most active bots who attack the opponents of the party and publish false information about them, while the “fans” disseminate “support for the regime.” Vidaković explained: The “haters” are those who attack every piece of news by the free media. Frequently, they can be recognized by comments such as “I am not a supporter of Vučić, but these…” or “They are all the same” and similar comments. Haters are in charge of killing the morale of the politically neutral.” Vidaković has not expressed much mercy for the persons whose personal data he published, although he suspects that many of them were forced to serve as SNS bots to keep their jobs in various state or public institutions. He said that the people identified as bots from smaller towns in Serbia are now put to shame within their community, as their neighbors or relatives could identify who had been viciously harassing them behind the mask of anonymity. He also added he hopes that criminal charges will be brought against them. However, contrary to his claims, participating in such a “bot network” or troll farm is not a criminal act in itself, unless it involves threats to public security. The criminal element in such an operation is the abuse of funds from the state budget for bribing citizens to perform activities that are not legally defined as part of their job description as civil servants.