An organization close to Moscow has waged a social media influence campaign in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, using “troll farms” and hackneyed tactics, Meta (Facebook, Instagram) revealed on Thursday.
Meta has dismantled a network of fake accounts on its platforms, created by an entity called “Cyber Front Z” and people associated in the past with the “Internet Research Agency” (IRA), suspected of being a digital arm of the Kremlin. .
These fake accounts, run by employees of a “troll farm” located in St. Petersburg, posted pro-Russian comments on personalities and media content, to “give the impression of popular support for the invasion of Ukraine.”
“There was no iceberg hidden underneath,”
“Russia is sending tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, where the local Nazis (…) are holding citizens hostage,” commented one of these accounts under a video uploaded by Angelina Jolie about the war, on Instagram, according to Meta . report.
In total, the social media giant removed more than 1,000 accounts on Instagram and 45 on Facebook in early April. Some 49,000 accounts followed one or more of the fake profiles on Instagram.
In 2016, the US presidential campaign was marked by massive influence operations carried out by the IRA on behalf of Donald Trump.
But unlike other past campaigns, Cyber Front Z did not really try to hide, on the contrary.
“There was no iceberg hiding underneath,” Ben Nimmo noted. “It was an attempt to hack into (the public’s) perception, playing on our fears, playing on the impression that these operations are effective.”
“clumsy” operation
“They had a weird channel on Twitter saying + we hacked your elections, we overthrew the Americans, your democracy is in our pocket +,” the official recounted.
A Russian media outlet, Fontanka, revealed in March that a “troll farm” was recruiting, among other things, “spammers” and “commenters” to post on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, and others in Russia.
In Telegram messages, a public channel called on its subscribers to flood certain accounts of public figures or news sites with pro-Russian comments.
But the operation “was largely clumsy and ineffective,” the report notes. “On Instagram, more than half of fake accounts were detected and deactivated by our automated systems right after they were created.”
Source: BFM TV
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