Aug 9: Stan Pribylov, The Kremlin is looking for new opportunities to spread disinformation
As published by VOA on Aug 3, 2023
The Kremlin is looking for new opportunities to spread disinformation
Stan Pribylov, Voice of America, 3 August, 2023
The recently launched project of the Meta holding - Threads - began to quickly fill up with disinformation messages of Russian origin, and then of Chinese origin.
The war in Ukraine, as it turned out in the very first days of the full-scale invasion of Russia, has a second front - the informational one, on which not only Ukraine, but many countries of the world are fighting the Kremlin propaganda machine.
Kremlin propaganda has become dangerous for Western society as well, because it is quick to point out vulnerabilities and seeks to exploit them by escalating tensions to destabilize democracy and thus split the West.
Nathalie Vogel, a research fellow at the Institute of World Politics (Nathalie Vogel, Research Fellow, Institute of World Politics), who has been involved in information security in Europe for many years, is convinced that during the war the Kremlin stepped up efforts in this direction even more.
As an example, she cited the recent cynical “use by the Kremlin propagandists” of a seemingly mundane topic: the urban housing crisis that many Western capitals are experiencing.
“The Kremlin, in this case, skillfully manipulated the discussion in such a way that the disputes ended up exclusively on racial or migration issues, and Russian propagandists immediately linked the issue with colonialism. This is a classic way of stoking extremism and instigating civil unrest,” she explained.
At the same time, the war in Ukraine opened the eyes of many in the West to what pro-Kremlin media are.
However, after in the spring of 2022, as a result of decisions of the parliaments and governments of the EU and the United States, most major Western platforms and telecommunications providers blocked the Russian propaganda resources RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, as well as other state-supported news agencies and TV channels. from Russia and other authoritarian states, propagandists from the same countries also began to use every opportunity to spread their fake messages, actively filling any other social networks and online platforms with them.
Investigation by American journalists
Recently, the American edition of The Wall Street Journal published an investigation that state-supported media accounts from Russia and China gained hundreds of thousands of subscribers in Threads Meta, a new Twitter-like project of Mark Zuckerberg's holding Meta Platforms, Inc.
The social network for microblogging Threads Meta, according to The Wall Street Journal, does not mark propaganda accounts from Russia and China with the same "label" as is done in other social networks of the holding - Instagram and Facebook.
The “Russia state-controlled media” label has played a significant role in limiting the spread of Kremlin propaganda.
“Many subscribers of accounts marked with this “label” have unsubscribed. A significant number of users have stopped copying posts from these accounts. In addition, the networks themselves have slowed down the rotation of such materials, and the number of users who can see these messages in their feed has decreased to a minimum, ”Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Defense Society, explained to the Voice of America Russian Service, who, for his activities to protect freedom of speech on the Internet and in the media, the Russian Federation was one of the first to be included by the Kremlin in the list of “foreign agents”.
However, Meta launched Threads before the service was fully built to capitalize on the problems of main competitor Twitter, which lost a lot of users under the leadership of Elon Musk, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal. As a result, Threads lacks basic moderation features, including the aforementioned "shortcuts".
Russia's RT and Sputnik News, China's CGTN and Xinhua News, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards-run Fars News have attracted hundreds of thousands of subscribers since Threads launched this month, the outlet estimates.
Propagandists felt "out of control"
Sputnik News last week posted a rigged video to Threads showing US President Joe Biden looking through books purportedly next to a "Brain Exercise for Dementia" sign.
Back in 2020, Facebook Fact-Checkers denied the authenticity of the published video, stating that to create it, “real footage was taken of Biden looking at books in a store, on which, with the help of a special effect, was superimposed new inscription.
Interestingly, three years ago, Sputnik News did not publish this video on its Instagram account, where the agency is listed specifically as a "Russian state-controlled organization."
After The Wall Street Journal asked a Meta spokesperson about the "Biden video" in Threads, a "label" appeared next to the video describing it as "false information", which also stated that "independent fact-checkers confirmed that this information is false (it is a fake).
At the same time, China's CGTN posted on a new network an announcement about what the CCP calls a "successful new policy of genocide of the region's Muslim ethnic minority - the Uighurs".
China's Xinhua News Agency released a video from a fashion show in Xinjiang, stating that the show in the region promotes "the openness, inclusiveness and timeless beauty of Chinese culture."
Natalie Vogel also sees a threat in the joint use of the new American media platform by propagandists from China and the Russian Federation:
“Relations between the Russian Federation and China have now turned into a strong partnership in the field of information policy. The real danger is posed by official agreements on the exchange of information messages between agencies adopted within the framework of the BRICS. This creates a huge “propaganda echo chamber” for disinformation spread by the two authoritarian regimes.”
Social networks, gaining new subscribers, allow them a lot
According to CNN, the number of Threads Meta subscribers in the first week reached 100 million, which happened not without the influence of accounts of Russian propaganda resources.
"Meta is probably prioritizing subscriber growth at this stage in order to increase the scale of new user influx without moderating content," Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, told The Wall Street Journal.
He says Threads Meta will eventually need to introduce stricter moderation, including those “labels” about “state-supported media,” if it wants to compete with Twitter.
Twitter, which was recently rebranded as X, also began applying "labels" to government news sources back in 2020, but in April of this year, when Elon Musk took over the company, the platform abandoned the "labels" system.
Elon Musk has described himself as "a supporter of absolute free speech" and stated that Twitter "should be careful when deleting tweets or blocking users."
Neil Shah doubts that Threads Meta will follow in the footsteps of Elon Musk. The expert added that in this case, “the new platform could explode if a fake message or the spread of threats and hate goes viral.”
Mikhail Klimarev agrees with Neil Shah's suggestion, stressing that such tactics are "common for launching new social networks around the world." Especially, those who are able to “wind up a subscription” (An artificial way to increase a subscription, which the Russian service of “Voice of America” talked about earlier)
“They recruit any subscribers, and then they begin to impose restrictions on the spread of misinformation and propaganda. As I already said: labels will be introduced, rotation will be slowed down. Then they will be caught several times for “non-compliance with the rules of the community”, they will be blocked “temporarily”, and, in the end, they will be “closed forever”, ”the expert believes.
Indeed, after the initial “spike” in the number of subscribers, their involvement in Threads began to decline, forcing Meta to open up new features, such as a chronological feed, rather than an algorithmically generated one.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote this month in his account on the new platform that "the vision of the leadership of the social network is to create an open and friendly public space for communication."
Mikhail Klimarev commented on this as follows:
“This is generally the only way for a large-scale social network to exist. Otherwise, they will not be sold advertising. In other words, sooner or later the market itself will force you to fight lies, propaganda, disinformation and hatred.”
Labels and Fact-Checking Are Not Enough for Information
I am convinced that there is “nothing unexpected” in the story with Threads.
“Firstly, like any other online platform, Threads can be in a situation where someone tries to misuse it and transmit knowingly false information. Secondly, from the very beginning it was clear that the Kremlin would not refuse the possibility of using the new network, as well as any other online services that do not properly track their users, ”he is sure.
A Threads spokeswoman did not respond to The Wall Street Journal's request for comment on whether a fact-checking system is currently being implemented on the new platform.
“In the near future we will add “labels” to Threads about “state-controlled media,” a Meta spokesman said in a statement after the publication of the investigation in The Wall Street Journal.
He also added that "the network's policy is against hate speech: it applies to other Meta apps, and it applies to Threads as well", that the company "will use disinformation data obtained from independent fact-checking sources", and that Meta "is looking into additional ways to address misinformation in Threads in future updates."
Natalie Vogel is convinced that "these measures will not be enough."
And Philip Sabe is sure that "Russia and other authoritarian countries will still try to use any innovations and technological advantages to improve the quality of their disinformation."
“If social media companies ignore the introduction of a system of control over manipulation from outside, democratic processes will continue to be increasingly endangered,” the professor emphasized.
Attitudes towards social media need to change
Over the years, one group of users - critics of social media - have argued that services like Facebook and Twitter should do more to prevent the spread of misinformation, while others have complained that such protective activities are online. -platforms is tantamount to censorship.
The very fact that Threads is used by Russian and Chinese propaganda raises many questions about the balance between “income and trust” in modern media and social networks.
“Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate,” says Natalie Vogel, “but the real problem with social media, in terms of countering propaganda, is not at all its accessibility to supporters of violence and tyranny, because free societies cannot completely limit the influence of such users because, unlike dictatorships, Western societies are open, uncensored… The real danger lies in the speed with which disinformation is spread and consumed. Meta, like Twitter, has changed the time and space factor in media. In the “information battle”, the one who masters the factors of time and space automatically gains an advantage, no matter what content he offers,” Natalie Vogel explained the main problem.
To which Professor Philip Sabe added:
“False information must be countered by truthful information delivered at the appropriate speed and in the appropriate quantity. In addition, people should be able to protect both freedom of speech and the truth, cultivating a healthy skepticism in society regarding information from unverified sources.”