Category Archives: Endless Mayfly

Someone duped Twitter verification to spread racist disinformation on US coronavirus vaccine

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A verified Twitter account impersonating a top World Health Organization official recently alleged that the Trump administration was going to test a coronavirus vaccine on Black Americans without their knowledge or informed consent. The disinformation scheme originated in May with an account masquerading as Dr. Jaouad Mahjour, assistant director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), in the latest example of attackers trying to inflame existing tension in the U.S. over issues like vaccines and racism. Tweets included racist tropes against Black Americans, and implied that the U.S. had lobbied WHO to test its vaccines on prisoners, immigrants, and Black Americans. Twitter has since suspended the account, after WHO representatives told reporters that the account in question didn’t belong to Mahjour. News of the disinformation was first reported by The Daily Beast. Neither Twitter nor the World Health Organization provided comment for this article by press time. The impersonation appeared to […]

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‘Typosquatting’ campaign imitated news outlets to spread propaganda for years, report says

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Researchers have uncovered a years-long disinformation campaign in which suspected Iranian operatives masqueraded as well known international media outlets and used fake Twitter accounts to amplify fabricated news articles. The group, dubbed Endless Mayfly, published some 135 news articles on sites meant to look like Bloomberg, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Politico and others, according to findings published Tuesday by Citizen Lab, the team of researchers at the University of Toronto. The group impersonated outlets via a technique known as “typosquatting,” in which it used websites like “theatlatnic.com” instead of “theatlantic.com” to avoid detection. Endless Mayfly would use this method to push anti-Saudi narratives and other fabrications that would be picked up on social media and legitimate news outlets, Citizen Lab said. It also involved the use of 11 Twitter personas since 2016. The effort demonstrates how propagandists have adopted the SEO and social media tactics that media outlets and other organizations […]

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