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Russian Disinformation Campaigns Eluded Meta's Efforts To Block Them (nytimes.com) 61

Posted by BeauHD from the behind-the-scenes dept.
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.
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Russian Disinformation Campaigns Eluded Meta's Efforts To Block Them More

Russian Disinformation Campaigns Eluded Meta's Efforts To Block Them

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  • Alternative headline: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @05:11PM (#65097665)

    Facebook Is A Huge Dumpster Fire and Meta Can't Be Arsed To Deal With It

    Meta is clearly too busy counting out all money it makes to deal with the societal problems it both creates and enables.

    • They've caused at least two maybe three genocides. Facebook has been used in multiple genocides back in the early 2010s in order to incite and excuse ethnic cleansing. They know it's happening and a lot of people are freaking out because they're backing off on fact checking. If you do a little googling around the phrase Facebook in genocide you'll find detailed articles on how and why it happened and what Facebook did when the global community called them to task on it.

      You can do a stupendous amount of

  • And have them start cutting fingers or other things off.

    Problem will end fast.

  • Yeah, 'eluded' (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @05:53PM (#65097723)

    Musk is an agent of Putin (https://apnews.com/article/musk-putin-x-trump-tesla-election-russia-9cecb7cb0f23ccce49336771280ae179).

    I don't think there's a similar direct link with Zuck. I'm pretty sure he's just looking to chase the next dollar and doesn't care who gets hurt. If providing aid to an enemy of the state (by simply not trying to stop them from using his platform for their ends) does that, he's onboard.

    Of course once the propaganda has done its job... is Russia still the enemy, and can you still call them traitors when half the population now supports Putin's useful tool in the White House?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Of course once the propaganda has done its job... is Russia still the enemy"

      Yes, of course. Putin seeks the destruction of NATO and the US. Having MAGA cheer him on doesn't change that.

  • "Eluded" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @06:03PM (#65097749) Journal

    "Russian Disinformation Campaigns Eluded Meta's Efforts To Block Them"

    They didn't 'elude' Meta's efforts, they were aided by Meta's efforts.

  • Strange game (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The only way to win is not to play (use social media).

  • Buying the government (Score:3)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @06:15PM (#65097773)

    ... political advertisements ...

    There are many actors to this story: A lack of fact-checking from Facebook, a lack of truth-in-advertising from US congress, a lack of reporting the facts from main-stream media and PACs, the GOP willfully cheating and breaking the political process, the Democratic Party ignoring corrupt politicians. The US has been an oligarchy for a long time: Trumpism means the rich stop hiding their control of the government and start buying it.

  • Check First, in partnership with Reset.tech and AI Forensics [checkfirst.network]

    What US three letter ageny are these fronting for? You would think these commie propagandists would be better at disguising the source.
  • We clearly cannot have that dangerous blanket of charged particles around the earth that allows the Russians, Chinese, Iranians etc. to distribute their disinformation campaigns via shortwave radio to everywhere around the world.

    But without irony, when I was young, many among my peers owned radios that allowed to receive shortwave radio transmissions from stations around the world, and of course there were propaganda stations in rivaling states dedicated to influence us. And of course they did not have a

    • But without irony, when I was young, many among my peers owned radios that allowed to receive shortwave radio transmissions from stations around the world, and of course there were propaganda stations in rivaling states dedicated to influence us. And of course they did not have a jingle warning "here is the Russian propaganda station Red Ivan, we are here to indoctrinate you!". And there was no "fact-checking"-man-in-the-middle between us and those radio stations.

      When you tune into these stations you know what you are getting into. On social media the source is obscured.

      So what? If their story is less convincing and incompatible with one's own personal experiences, there is nothing to fear.

      There is much to fear as propaganda works and has the potential of being insanely dangerous. Yet more perilous is the prospect of the state censoring and controlling what its own people can say.

      There is no reason in the world for any state on the planet to tolerate foreign attempts to undermine the state or its interests by allowing hostile foreign powers to wage information warfare against it.

  • So Chinese and Russian propaganda is bad but US propaganda is good?

  • The assholes at Facebook/Meta thrive on disinformation no matter where it comes from.

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