I looked at the original report. Here are some quotes:

“The content isn't violating or borderline. It does skew very hard towards clickbait and engagement bait, however.”

“The religious pages tend to be a mixture of the heavy engagement bait like the meme from “Light of the World” and sensational click bait stories about children, animals, and police officers.”

“Why Do They Do It? Money is definitely a big reason. There are a few ways to monetize an FB page.

1. Link to a domain where you show ads

2. Enter into our partnership programs

    1. Instant Articles
    2. Ad Breaks 

3. Do sponsored posting and sharing

4. Sell the Page after it reaches a large size.”

“Mostly, they seem to want to skim a quick buck off of their audience. But there are signs they have been in contact with the IRA... If the Troll Farms are reaching 30M US users with content targeted to African Americans, we should not at all be surprised if we discover the IRA also currently has large audiences there.”

The last quote is the one talking about potential political links. There are some serious concerns, but not as concrete as the claims made by the article.

Thanks! Seems like that report mostly just has speculation without much evidence about their motives, either way.

I appreciate your caution about jumping to assume the motives are political, when financial motives on the internet are of course so common.

True, I guess my interpretation also erred in favor of the other explanation, but the political motivations as interpreted by the article are far from clear-cut.