Category Archives: propaganda

UK ‘almost certain’ that 2019 election was target of Russian disinformation operation

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British officials expressed confidence that Russian operatives tried to interfere in the U.K.’s most recent general election by using social media to promote documents that were stolen and leaked from the government. Dominic Raab, the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, said in a statement Thursday that “it is almost certain that Russian actors” aimed to intervene in the 2019 election in which Boris Johnson defeated Jeremy Corbyn in the race for prime minister. The campaign utilized “illicitly acquired” government documents about the U.K.-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which were posted on Reddit and promoted elsewhere in an apparent attempt to influence potential voters’ opinions. “There is an ongoing criminal investigation and it would be inappropriate for us to say anything further at this point,” Raab said in a statement. “The Government reserves the right to respond with appropriate measures in the future.” The attribution is a reference to Operation Secondary Infektion, […]

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Sweeping Russian disinformation effort relied on blog posts, social media to target Kremlin rivals

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A years-long propaganda effort that relied on thousands of blog articles and internet forgeries to discredit adversaries of Russian President Vladimir Putin is the latest reminder that Kremlin operatives are trying to influence foreign affairs, even if their level of success often is difficult to measure. Since 2014, Russian disinformation specialists have authored roughly 2,500 anonymous blog stories, social media posts and other techniques in an attempt to amplify Kremlin messaging, according to findings published Tuesday by social media analysis firm Graphika. The activity focused on a range of other topics long-favored by Russian propaganda, such as the Ukrainian government, former U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the World Anti-Doping Agency. One facet of the campaign portrayed German Chancellor Angela Merkel as an alcoholic. Graphika describes the scheme as Operation Secondary Infektion, borrowing the name from a KGB plot which suggested the U.S. had invented the AIDS virus. While researchers noted […]

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Twitter nabs a network of Chinese accounts demonizing pro-democracy protests, spinning coronavirus news

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Just because Twitter is banned in mainland China doesn’t mean Beijing won’t use it to influence public opinion around the world. Twitter announced Thursday it removed 23,750 accounts linked to Chinese-backed propaganda campaigns. Those accounts made up the core of the effort, the company said, while another 150,000 sought to amplify the content on those core accounts. Much of the activity was aimed at undermining pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the coronavirus pandemic and discrediting Chinese dissidents, researchers found. Researchers from Stanford University’s Internet Observatory determined that the Twitter activity focused on COVID-19 accelerated in January and peaked in March. Often, the accounts would praise the Chinese government’s response to the pandemic, call for global unity on the issue and bristle at the notion that Taiwan’s government responded to the health crisis in an effective manner. The themes echo prior propaganda in other suspected Chinese social media operations and official […]

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Facebook removed white nationalist accounts encouraging guns at anti-racist protests

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Facebook removed multiple account networks connected with white nationalist hate groups that encouraged members to bring guns to anti-racism demonstrations throughout the United States. The social media company said Friday it removed sites affiliated with the Proud Boys and American Guard, which have been designated as extremist hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, respectively. Facebook removed roughly 30 accounts and 30 Instagram accounts belonging to the Proud Boys, which has appeared at white supremacist rallies like the Charlottesville demonstration in 2017. They also removed approximately 80 accounts and roughly 50 Instagram accounts from American Guard, who have advocated violence against immigrant and refugee communities. Both groups previously had been banned from Facebook, according to Brian Fishman, the company’s director of counterrorism and dangerous organizations. Facebook staff that had been monitoring both networks in an attempt to map their connections accelerated the account removals as […]

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Facebook removed Russian propaganda network only after accounts got sloppy

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Two networks of inauthentic Facebook accounts and pages removed last month had spent years leveraging the social media company’s reach to amplify thinly-veiled Russian propaganda criticizing the U.S. and antagonists of the Kremlin. Facebook announced Tuesday it removed 91 accounts, 46 pages, two groups and one Instagram page connected to Crimea-based media agencies, News Front and South Front, which researchers now say have connections to Russian intelligence services. Both outlets have existed for years, though Facebook removed them last month after detecting that they used fake accounts to post content and generate engagement. It’s a dichotomy that exemplifies Facebook’s approach to information operations: The company historically has been reluctant to remove political misinformation or conspiracy theories, but acts against account operators caught misrepresenting their identity. “The disclosure of this network is not necessarily new, but its amplification through the use of coordinated and inauthentic behavior is,” the Atlantic Council’s Digital […]

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Facebook scrubbed accounts related to QAnon and a designated hate group in April

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Facebook said Tuesday it has removed a number of pages and accounts dedicated to a far-right conspiracy theory that’s gained traction among  President Trump’s supporters. In the company’s first action against the QAnon group, Facebook says it removed 20 accounts, six groups and five pages caught fabricating personas to like and comment on their own posts to build engagement. Some 133,000 accounts followed one or more of the pages, while 30,000 accounts were involved in at least one of the groups, according to Facebook. That large influence network came without the individuals behind the effort spending more than $1 on Facebook ads. Including that action, the company said Tuesday it removed a total of eight networks of inauthentic user sites, including 732 accounts and 793 pages, that were operating in 15 languages and focused on 30 countries through all of April. Much of the activity was linked to individuals in Russia, Iran […]

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How China’s government used social media against movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong

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The Chinese government has adopted known disinformation techniques and utilized social media harassment campaigns to try to increase its influence in Asia, according to new findings that add to a growing body of research. In recent months, two distinct Chinese internet campaigns have sought to influence public opinion with fake news ahead of an election in Taiwan, and intimidate pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong by posting their personal data online. Both efforts mimic similar Russian operations, and reflect how governments’ use of social media for propaganda efforts have become an everyday reality for much of the world’s population. The latest research, published Wednesday by the threat intelligence firm Recorded Future, comes after international journalists and nongovernmental organizations also have detailed the interference in semi-autonomous Hong Kong and the disputed region of Taiwan over the past year. “From a tactical standpoint, the mainland Chinese government views both Taiwan and Hong Kong as domestic information space,” […]

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Chinese COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign

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The New York Times is reporting on state-sponsored disinformation campaigns coming out of China: Since that wave of panic, United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives helped push the messages across platforms, according to six American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss intelligence matters. The amplification techniques are alarming to officials because the… Continue reading Chinese COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign→

Here’s the latest info operation to blame the U.S. for coronavirus

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For the past six weeks, an Iranian influence operation has pushed cartoons and fabricated news articles suggesting the U.S government committed bioterrorism by using the coronavirus as a way of attacking China and Iran, according to a new analysis of social media activity. The Iranian propaganda group known as the International Union of Virtual Media, or IUVM, is behind a series of headlines and animated cartoons reporting, for instance, that COVID-19 is part of “a biological war led by Trump to strike at China’s economy,” according to a report published Wednesday by Graphika. Facebook and Twitter have removed IUVM-affiliated accounts dating back to 2018, though the latest effort again demonstrates how propagandists are using Western technology services to amplify disinformation. This disclosure comes just days after U.S. military officials publicly admonished governments in Iran, Russia and China for exploiting the global pandemic to fan anti-American sentiment. “With the advent of the coronavirus, […]

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Suspected Russian operatives tried using forged diplomatic documents, social media to create divisions

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A Russian information operation relied on forged diplomatic emails and planted articles on a number of social media sites in an attempt to undermine multiple governments and impersonate U.S. lawmakers, according to a new analysis of recent social media activity. Massachusetts-based Recorded Future on Wednesday published findings detailing how Russian-language operatives spent months using popular internet services to try to interfere in Estonia, the Republic of Georgia and the U.S. The effort appears to be a continuation of a prior Russian campaign, dubbed Operation Secondary Infektion, that utilized Facebook and dozens of online platforms to sow division in the West and discredit political efforts. The ongoing covert influence effort revealed Wednesday, known as Operation Pinball, involved activity on discussion sites like Reddit, LiveJournal, an array of self-publishing sites, falsified social media profiles that prioritized strong operational security over reaching a large audience. In one instance, Recorded Future detected a Reddit […]

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