U.S. Ran Disinfo Campaign Against Russia, China, Iran: Study

We all know about foreign-seeded propaganda, but we don't hear about America's own covert influence operations. What appears to have been a long-running U.S. misinformation campaign aimed at web users in Russia, China, and Iran has been revealed by social media researchers.

There were two sets of fraudulent accounts that were spreading inauthentic content on their platforms. Some of the data was shared with academic researchers after the networks were taken down. The campaigns had all the markings of a U.S. influence network, according to a study published by the internet observatory.

One of the members of the research team that published the paper was a staffer at the Internet Observatory. She noted that the campaigns were very similar to the influence campaigns launched by America's enemies.

It was weird to see accounts pushing the opposite narrative because we are used to analyzing pro-Kremlin sock puppets. The narratives in pro-Kremlin influence ops are very similar to those of the Americans in Syria. It was the same story, but with different words.

The propaganda spread via online communities in Russia, China, and Iran may have continued for a decade. Between March 2012 and February 2022. According to the report, the Meta dataset included 39 Facebook profiles, 16 pages, two groups, and 26Instagram accounts active from July to July.

The U.S. and Great Britain are presumptive countries of origin for the fake accounts, according to Meta.

The campaigns are about what you would expect. The report noted that.

These campaigns consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran. The accounts heavily criticized Russia in particular for the deaths of innocent civilians and other atrocities its soldiers committed in pursuit of the Kremlin’s “imperial ambitions” following its invasion of Ukraine in February this year. To promote this and other narratives, the accounts sometimes shared news articles from U.S. government-funded media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites sponsored by the U.S. military.

There was nothing unique about the ways in which the propaganda was distributed. She said that it wasn't the case that the influence operation originated in the U.S. There was not anything technically interesting about this network because the operation used the same tactics over and over again.