Accounts in favor of the Russian terror government, uses Twitter’s new paid verification system to be more visible to users. The source said this is another sign that Musk’s takeover of the company has accelerated the spread of politically motivated misinformation.

Mask and Russian propaganda

These accounts claim to be outside of Russia, so they can pay for verification without facing US sanctions. But articles from state-controlled media spread lies about Russian officials’ statements and Ukraine. The reset research group came to this conclusion.

• One of the accounts allegedly in San Francisco, describing himself As English “Anti-war. No wake up movement. No BLM. No gender pronouns. No Bernie/Trump/DeSantos/BidenHarris. No shit. Just anti-imperialism”. The avatar shows a woman in a fur hat with the coat of arms of the USSR.
• Another English page claims that “Ukraine is doing its part to stop Western support for its military machine”. He calls himself “a look through the wall of Western propaganda”.

Most of these accounts found by Reset were created at the start of the full-scale intrusion last year. Archive web pages show that didn’t have blue ticks until recently. However, they did get these certifications after Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, introduced a paid verification model and announced that he would be phasing out old verifications that identify politicians, journalists, and other famous personalities and weed out fraudsters.

Moreover, the social network plans to make tweets and replies from such paid followers even more visible in the news feed and Twitter search. However Some of the accounts are already getting more views in recent weeks: Musk “increased the popularity of one of the accounts” by responding to his tweets, including a message that spread the lie that thousands of NATO soldiers had died in Ukraine.

Reset said the spike indicates a serious problem with the system that allows anonymous accounts to buy verification and rank higher in search results and recommendations.

The detected accounts openly spread content from Russian state media, Kremlin-related disinformation about the conflict in Ukraine, and outright war propaganda.
– writes the group.

Former employees and disinformation researchers have previously accused the company of firing several regional experts who evaluated its influence operations, dissolving its security advisory board, and reopening accounts banned for spreading hate speech and lies.

Also known about At least two members of the Afghan Taliban regime paid monthly in dollars for blue ticks, until the media reported it last month. After these messages, the verification marks were removed.

Starlink, election and troll factory

Musk’s company, SpaceX, played an important role in the defense of Ukraine, providing thousands of Starlink satellite communications terminals that allowed Internet services to continue despite Russia’s attacks on infrastructure. But at the same time, the company’s director, Gwynne Shotwell, had previously announced that the use of the technology for offensive military purposes should be limited. Musk has distinguished himself with a scandalous “peace plan” for Russia and Ukraine, which has turned out to be well-suited to his aggressive plans. Therefore, as the source wrote, Twitter’s attitude towards Russia received special attention.

The Washington Post also mentions the 2016 US presidential election, where the public became aware of the “Russian Internet Research Agency”, better known as the “Troll Factory”. This organization deals with the dissemination of Russian propaganda on the Internet, provokes scandals on a political basis, discredits the opposition (if we assume it exists in Russia), creates the necessary public opinion for the government. The group’s activities were particularly visible on Twitter and Facebook when it tried to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump. As with some new accounts, workers of the “troll factory” often behaved like patriotic Americans.

It is worth noting that the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin noted that not so long ago he not only financed the Internet Research Agency, but also created and managed it.” At the same time, “Wagner” is the creator and head of the PMC , today in Ukraine the active.

Twitter doesn’t care

Yoel Roth, who headed Twitter’s trust and security department until November, told the media that he remained on Twitter after Musk took over the company to combat such misleading foreign election influence. However, he later resigned and testified before the US Senate this month. thousands of automated Russian propaganda accounts are still on the platform.

The mass layoffs and layoffs of Musk to date have significantly reduced the number of lobbyists overall. The “last Russian specialist of the platform” also recently left the company. The loss of a similar expert on China had previously had negative consequences. Critics of the Chinese regime have found it more difficult to deal with the illegal suspension of their accounts by providing screenshots of dozens of accounts that have been removed from searches or blocked for weeks for “spam,” as they said in a previous interview.

return to Russia

Verified pro-Russian accounts identified by Reset use different approaches. Some advertise themselves as independent media. Others are spreading false English content on military topics, telling stories about the Russian military, showing videos of successful attacks, linking Ukrainians with the Nazis, translating Putin’s speeches into English for Western audiences, etc.. Moreover, the number of subscribers reaches tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds.

Among the most popular pages is Runews, which existed for over 10 years before getting a blue verification mark on Feb. It was he who broadcast the message about the death of NATO soldiers, which we talked about earlier. This statement claimed “157,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 2,458 NATO soldiers died in the war”. Musk made the following statement on the subject: “Tragic loss of life”. This made Runews’ tweet visible to its 130 million followers and sparked a discussion thread.

The account, which describes itself as a “citizen journalist”, has more than 260,000 followers and resorts to vulgar propaganda.

• For example, several proposals have been issued recently for the state of Ohio to “declare itself part of Ukraine in hopes of getting help from the Biden administration.” Journalists note that the authors in this message omitted the article “the”, a common mistake among Russian speakers.
• The account “regularly uses content from Russian state media like RT International or propagandists Margarita Simonyan, mocks the EU, NATO, Ukraine and the West in general, and openly supports Russia’s actions in the war. Much of its content is targeted. On “US Republican Twitter” .

The number of Russian frauds is constantly growing. Most have few followers, but together they can fill the debate with pro-Putin answers.

Conspiracy theories take the stage

According to researcher Mark Owen Jones, a professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, pro-Russian disinformation is promoted not only by human-run troll accounts, but also by automated accounts. Jones, a group of influential people He supported a conspiracy theory that the United States caused an earthquake in Turkey as punishment for the country’s opposition to NATO expansion. His tweets were augmented by thousands of accounts, including hundreds of pages created simultaneously over several days in October and April last year.

Stating that the same pages previously wrote that Volodymyr Zelensky was a war criminal, Jones added that the authors of these accounts mostly used the abbreviation MAGA (Make America Great Again), which is Donald Trump’s main slogan in the US presidential elections.