Pro-Russian groups orchestrate various disinformation campaigns on social media using fake profiles or hacked accounts to portray Ukraine as a mere pawn in Western hands, Meta claimed on Sunday.
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Meta has shut down fake accounts and blocked the sharing of web addresses linking to sites spreading fake news, said David Agranovich, the company’s chief threat officer.
These groups “run websites posing as independent news entities and create fake profiles on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram and also (Russian networks) Odnoklassniki and VK Meta said in a blog post, pointing out that she had blocked a large number of fake accounts affiliated with the Russian state.
“In some cases, they used profile photos which (…) were probably generated using artificial intelligence techniques”, adds the group.
The small network of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts targeted people in Ukraine, helping to spread false information about that country’s efforts to defend itself against the Russian invasion.
This network has been identified by Meta as being linked to people in Russia and Ukraine, as well as NewsFront and SouthFront media organizations in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. According to the United States, NewsFront and SouthFront are disinformation outlets that take orders from Russian intelligence services.
These are among more than a dozen entities sanctioned by Washington for trying to influence the 2020 US presidential election, “under the leadership” of Russia.
Among the false claims published by the sites: the West has betrayed Ukraine, and Ukraine is a failed state.
The invasion of Ukraine was the occasion for an outbreak of fake news on the internet, in particular on social networks, a phenomenon that has become recurrent with each outbreak of war or conflict.