When it comes to disinformation, Russia (and the USSR) has been both the King and his court for over 100 years of propaganda wars. They meddle in everything from local elections to social justice issues in an attempt to influence policy or sentiment that will benefit their country. It is as part of their national security strategy. It’s The Bachelorette to reality television.
The Power of Social Media
Social media has given the Russians the ability to take that strategy into the stratosphere the last ten years. From the infamous Internet Research Agency to the current war with Ukraine, there is no country that is even close to using the same amount of fake accounts on social media to influence opinion, spread disinformation, and cause divisiveness. In a 2022 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior report published by Meta, for the third quarter alone, the company took down approximately 80 suspicious Facebook and Instagram accounts from China, 65 from the United States and…..1,650 from Russia!
Over 700 Facebook Pages originating included over 60 links to spoofed websites that mimicked the exact layout and almost exact spoofed web addresses of mainstream European media such as Der Spiegel, The Guardian and others. The Facebook Pages also linked other social media such as YouTube with the same false account name. While the automation tools used by Meta detected many of the fake sites and pages, investigative journalists and open source researchers had a hand in the effort as well. Russia’s tactics to impose their disinformation attacks against the enemy and anyone else they find bothersome is to “brute force” their way to the reader, using a many fake accounts as possible, hoping some of their efforts go without detection.
Other Countries Take Notes
While Meta’s 2022 fourth quarter report declares a decline in Russian state sponsored Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior, it appears the rest of the world has adopted a page or two from their playbook. Notable were the countries of Serbia and Cuba, as well as Bolivia, who all had fake accounts numbering in the hundreds taken down by Meta. Unlike most of Russian disinformation, these countries focused on domestic targets to embolden their current regimes.
Finally, over 40 Chinese individuals associated with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security were recently indicted by the Department of Justice under allegations of transnational repression for creating and using fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate PRC dissidents, living in the United States. Unlike the Russians, the Chinese strategy has been to counter information and allegations with disinformation, coming from legitimate sources. When using disinformation in the form of social media, the Chinese have routinely focused on specific individuals to attack instead of the “brute force” tactics used by Russia.
Many of the actions behind the scenes that companies like Meta take to eliminate CIB go unnoticed because the law shields them from most liability. However, it is fair to point out than in the war against disinformation, their good faith efforts to eliminate such conduct should be recognized.
