Online 'Information War' in Africa Rages on Social Media (yahoo.com) 46
The Washington Post tells the story of a veteran political operative and a former army intelligence officer hired to help keep in power the president of the west African nation Burkina Faso:
Their company, Percepto International, was a pioneer in what's known as the disinformation-for-hire business. They were skilled in deceptive tricks of social media, reeling people into an online world comprised of fake journalists, news outlets and everyday citizens whose posts were intended to bolster support for [president Roch Marc] Kaboré's government and undercut its critics. But as Percepto began to survey the online landscape across Burkina Faso and the surrounding French-speaking Sahel region of Africa in 2021, they quickly saw that the local political adversaries and Islamic extremists they had been hired to combat were not Kaboré's biggest adversary. The real threat, they concluded, came from Russia, which was running what appeared to be a wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at destabilizing Burkina Faso and other democratically-elected governments on its borders.
Pro-Russian fake news sites populated YouTube and pro-Russian groups abounded on Facebook. Local influencers used WhatsApp and Telegram groups to organize pro-Russian demonstrations and praise Russian President Vladimir Putin. Facebook fan pages even hailed the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary network run by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the late one-time Putin ally whose Internet Research Agency launched a disinformation campaign in the United States to influence the 2016 presidential election... Percepto didn't know the full scope of the operation it had uncovered but it warned Kaboré's government that it needed to move fast: Launch a counteroffensive online — or risk getting pushed out in a coup.
Three years later, the governments of five former French colonies, including Burkina Faso, have been toppled. The new leaders of two of those countries, Mali and Burkina Faso, are overtly pro-Russian; in a third, Niger, the prime minister installed after a July coup has met recently with the Russian ambassador. In Mali and the Central African Republic, French troops have been replaced with Wagner mercenaries...
Percepto's experience in French-speaking Africa offers a rare window into the round-the-clock information warfare that is shaping international politics — and the booming business of disinformation-for-hire. Meta, the social media company that operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, says that since 2017 it has detected more than 200 clandestine influence operations, many of them mercenary campaigns, in 68 countries.
The article also makes an interesting point. "The burden of battling disinformation has fallen entirely on Silicon Valley companies."
Pro-Russian fake news sites populated YouTube and pro-Russian groups abounded on Facebook. Local influencers used WhatsApp and Telegram groups to organize pro-Russian demonstrations and praise Russian President Vladimir Putin. Facebook fan pages even hailed the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary network run by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the late one-time Putin ally whose Internet Research Agency launched a disinformation campaign in the United States to influence the 2016 presidential election... Percepto didn't know the full scope of the operation it had uncovered but it warned Kaboré's government that it needed to move fast: Launch a counteroffensive online — or risk getting pushed out in a coup.
Three years later, the governments of five former French colonies, including Burkina Faso, have been toppled. The new leaders of two of those countries, Mali and Burkina Faso, are overtly pro-Russian; in a third, Niger, the prime minister installed after a July coup has met recently with the Russian ambassador. In Mali and the Central African Republic, French troops have been replaced with Wagner mercenaries...
Percepto's experience in French-speaking Africa offers a rare window into the round-the-clock information warfare that is shaping international politics — and the booming business of disinformation-for-hire. Meta, the social media company that operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, says that since 2017 it has detected more than 200 clandestine influence operations, many of them mercenary campaigns, in 68 countries.
The article also makes an interesting point. "The burden of battling disinformation has fallen entirely on Silicon Valley companies."
We have Russian trolls here on /. too (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen dozens of comments pushing Kremlin "narrative".
This is the most important front for the West - even more important than Ukraine and Gaza as it happens in all western countries.
And it impacts the 2 hot wars - I am convinced Slovakia's elections was heavily impacted by it and resulted in possible withdrawal of Slovakia's military support for Ukraine.
Russian links were found around elections in all major Western countries.
This is our WW3 - luckily for us it is not hot for all but Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians but it will impact and cost us.
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I'd like to know what certain other countries are doing to mess with Russia.
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Not enough. Drop a MOP on the Kremlin and nothing of value will be lost. In fact, there will notable gains across the entire board with that dead weight gone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: We have Russian trolls here on /. too (Score:3, Insightful)
And there is the usual American voice of reason we all know and love.
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lol if it was we wouldn't be sitting here staring at this colossal pile of shit created by the russian state.
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Drop a MOP on the Kremlin and nothing of value will be lost.
Except a priceless historical site.
Re:We have Russian trolls here on /. too (Score:5, Insightful)
Expect to hear every variation that's possible on the theme of "Wait, those assholes whose preferred policies invariably had the 'side effect' of helping Russia were Russian stooges the whole time?"
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Oh I'm pretty sure someone will step in to fill the void.
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Begins with a "C" and five letters long. [telegraph.co.uk]
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The goal seems to be instead of an alliance of democratic leaders, have an alliance of totalitarian kleptocracies, with one asshole to rule them all. An alliance of mob bosses in other words with the Joker in charge.
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They are everywhere. I'm convinced that St. Petersburg is basically a troll factory pretending to be a city. I feel like this is the job 50% of russians have and hide from us. I wonder where the money they earn comes from.. then again, a few million a year is nothing when you have billions. That's like an Amazon sub. Beer money.
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This is our WW3 - luckily for us it is not hot for all but Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians but it will impact and cost us.
With Africa blowing up, all the bellicose regions of the world have now popped except Asia. We're still waiting to see what happens over there.
Re:We have Russian trolls here on /. too (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the most important front for the West - even more important than Ukraine and Gaza as it happens in all western countries.
No. Wrong conclusion. If we do not help to make the war in Ukraine a clear win for Ukraine, this disinformation war will continue. And how should open societies win this war? By shutting down free opinion? We can only lose if we let the current regime in Russia continue.
Only a decisive win for Ukraine will topple Putin and install more reasonable people. There are enough of those in Russia, they only keep their heads down today. But given the chance they will make sure that the FSB will not control their government again.
Putin started this war and by doing so gave us in the West the unique opportunity to bring him down. That is the most important thing to do and will be accomplished by a clear win for Ukraine.
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It is hot for all, because the same set of leverages is used against all the base: weaknesses of the developed world, from the power of money and corruption, to imperial missionaries, to immigrants without integration, useful idiots not being excluded neither; weaknesses of the third world and Middle East - military services from ruZZia, cooperation with _whatever_ regimes. Any split in societies is blown-up. All the useful lies and misleading are offloaded. All the mud is employed and called to rise across
Why look at Africa? (Score:5, Informative)
With the Palestine/Israel thing going on right now, the amount of AI generated images I saw is staggering. I could tell it was AI made because I use it, myself. Meanwhile, my friends keep forwarding me photos of "the horrors" where the truly horrifying thing is the number of extra fingers the mutilated person has.
People grew up relying on the news and on photo evidence as the undoubted truth-bearers. It will take a while for everyone to adjust.
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What really gets to me is that this works in former East Bloc countries, too. You should think that if anyone should know that the media lie to you, it's them.
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Do you always begin conversations this way?
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Why not look at Africa? There are 7.8 billion people in the world, many of them far more impacted by what is going on in Africa than in Israel or Ukraine. And there are some of us who haven't had our brain so destroyed by TikTok that we actually still have the attention span to think about or talk about more than one thing at a time.
I'm not sure if you're new to the concept of propaganda or to our planet in general, but there's no reason to talk about just one thing at a time. The world is a big place with
Beating the French at their own game? (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like France is going to have to pay a fairer price for its uranium & other natural resources from the region or find it elsewhere.
Also, let's see how well the Kremlin is going to support the new Sahel regimes in dealing with the many Islamist militant groups that operate in the region.
Oh, the joys of geopolitical power-struggles.
Re:Beating the French at their own game? (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair history works against the French and in favor of the Russians in Africa. France's recent enough history as colonial masters doesnt make them terribly endearing while Russia's opposition to the West's colonial empires when it was the Soviet Union makes them easier to like. As far as everything I've read on recent events in Africa this certainly seems to be the lens that many Africans are looking through at least.
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Looks like France is going to have to pay a fairer price for its uranium & other natural resources from the region or find it elsewhere.
France already sources uranium from non-African countries, leading to embarassing pictures [francetvinfo.fr].
Boots on ground (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Boots on ground (Score:5, Interesting)
a continent where witchcraft trials still occur
Give it time, we're getting there. With half of the people hellbent on dragging us back into the medieval times, Salem might come to a town near you.
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And what purpose would that serve? So you don't need to listen to uncomfortable questions anymore?
Re:Boots on ground (Score:4, Interesting)
France had long-standing boots on the ground in all those countries. They got asked to leave. Boots only matter if you're planning on occupying. Colonial style.
Otherwise it's the information that matters. Facebook has been a huge enabler of negative information warfare. Its algorithms are tuned for that. Solution: Eliminate Facebook and cohorts.
Re: Boots on ground (Score:2)
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We are in WW3 (Score:2)
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It's kinda way more comfy than WW2. Back then, the allies bombed my home town.
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My grandma was trying to get her kids somehow through the whole shit and my grandpa was sitting somewhere well "protected" because he happened to be a socialist. Neither of them had a lot of chance to do anything to anyone.
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Sure, the point is that comparing what's going on right now to WW2 is a quite US-centric point of view. Maybe that's what it was like in the US, with the actual war happening far, far away, somewhere in the Pacific or somewhere in Europe. It was quite different for the rest of the participants.
It's everywhere (Score:2)
Why should this be the one war that Africa doesn't get dragged into?
Breaking news (Score:2)
Nothing New, have you heard of the CIA? (Score:3)
Re: Nothing New, have you heard of the CIA? (Score:3)
What a great time for Africa! (Score:3)
Still, a nuclear power plant, not bad Burkina Faso, not bad at all: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com] This thing will make more power than the whole country produces already.
https://news.yahoo.com/why-rus... [yahoo.com]
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Fertile Ground (Score:2)
I have a decent amount of personal experience with the region. Americans, in particular, are often ignorant about how colonialism shaped the region and how colonialism never really left. The aftermath of colonialism is a key reason why West Africa is fertile ground for Russian information warfare. The population is already primed to be skeptical of Western narratives because they have been at the receiving end of dirty deals and lies from the former colonial powers for generations. Even though Russia is fun