Russian Disinformation Campaigns Eluded Meta's Efforts To Block Them
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A Russian organization linked to the Kremlin's covert influence campaigns posted more than 8,000 political advertisements on Facebook despite European and American restrictions barring companies from doing business with the organization, according to three organizations that track disinformation online. The Russian group, the Social Design Agency, evaded lax enforcement by Facebook to place an estimated $338,000 worth of ads aimed at European users over a period of 15 months that ended in October, even though the platform itself highlighted the threat, the three organizations said in a report released on Friday. The Social Design Agency has faced punitive sanctions in the European Union since 2023 and in the United States since April for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media. The ad campaigns on Facebook raise "critical questions about the platform's compliance" with American and European laws, the report said. [...] The Social Design Agency is a public relations company in Moscow that, according to American and European officials, operates a sophisticated influence operation known as Doppelganger. Since 2022, Doppelganger has created cartoon memes and online clones of real news sites, like Le Monde and The Washington Post, to spread propaganda and disinformation, often about the war in Ukraine. [...] The organizations documenting the campaign -- Check First, a Finnish research company, along with Reset.Tech in London and AI Forensics in Paris -- focused on efforts to sway Facebook users in France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Doppelganger has been also linked to influence operations in the United States, Israel and other countries, but those are not included in the report's findings. [...] The researchers estimated that the ads resulted in more than 123,000 clicks by users and netted Meta at least $338,000 in the European Union alone. The researchers acknowledged that the figures provide only one, incomplete example of the Russian agency's efforts. In addition to propagating Russia's views on Ukraine, the agency posted ads in response to major news events, including theHamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and a terrorist attack in a Moscow suburb last March that killed 145 people. The ads would often appear within 48 hours, trying to shape public perceptions of events. After the Oct. 7 attacks, the ads pushed false claims that Ukraine sold weapons to Hamas. The ads reached more than 237,000 accounts over two to three days, "underscoring the operation's capacity to weaponize current events in support of geopolitical narratives," the researcher's report said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A Russian organization linked to the Kremlin's covert influence campaigns posted more than 8,000 political advertisements on Facebook despite European and American restrictions barring companies from doing business with the organization, according to three organizations that track disinformation online. The Russian group, the Social Design Agency, evaded lax enforcement by Facebook to place an estimated $338,000 worth of ads aimed at European users over a period of 15 months that ended in October, even though the platform itself highlighted the threat, the three organizations said in a report released on Friday.
The Social Design Agency has faced punitive sanctions in the European Union since 2023 and in the United States since April for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media. The ad campaigns on Facebook raise "critical questions about the platform's compliance" with American and European laws, the report said. [...] The Social Design Agency is a public relations company in Moscow that, according to American and European officials, operates a sophisticated influence operation known as Doppelganger. Since 2022, Doppelganger has created cartoon memes and online clones of real news sites, like Le Monde and The Washington Post, to spread propaganda and disinformation, often about the war in Ukraine.
[...] The organizations documenting the campaign -- Check First, a Finnish research company, along with Reset.Tech in London and AI Forensics in Paris -- focused on efforts to sway Facebook users in France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Doppelganger has been also linked to influence operations in the United States, Israel and other countries, but those are not included in the report's findings. [...] The researchers estimated that the ads resulted in more than 123,000 clicks by users and netted Meta at least $338,000 in the European Union alone. The researchers acknowledged that the figures provide only one, incomplete example of the Russian agency's efforts. In addition to propagating Russia's views on Ukraine, the agency posted ads in response to major news events, including theHamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and a terrorist attack in a Moscow suburb last March that killed 145 people. The ads would often appear within 48 hours, trying to shape public perceptions of events. After the Oct. 7 attacks, the ads pushed false claims that Ukraine sold weapons to Hamas. The ads reached more than 237,000 accounts over two to three days, "underscoring the operation's capacity to weaponize current events in support of geopolitical narratives," the researcher's report said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
