The Russian disinformation network created 60 news sites that fabricated fake news and were visually very similar to reputable Western news portals such as the Guardian, Spiegel and T-Online. We have HERE ! The 1,600 fake Facebook profiles then diligently shared these false reports.
The Facebook Group shares its findings in a report and speaks of “the largest and most complex Russian disinformation operation since the beginning of the war.”
Here is our fact check on this topic from September 1, 2022
We have never seen such a large-scale disinformation campaign like the current pro-Russian one on social media!
The finely honed Russian propaganda
Since wars have been waged, not only stones, spears, bullets and rockets have been flying, but also propaganda reports - previously as fake leaflets, now as fake news sites. These are not so clumsy as “Russia is good, Ukraine is bad”, but rather they exploit people's fears in a much more subtle way in order to influence their opinions.
Here are some examples of fake sites:
And these are just three of the very numerous counterfeit articles.
It is rare that one side is directly addressed, as in the false article that claims that Ukrainian refugees are receiving aid throughout Europe in order to then live in Russia.
A majority of the articles are much more subtle: For example, as in the top right, a fake Bild article claims that a teenager died because the street lights were turned off to save energy. The impending gas crisis is also a recurring topic that is greatly exaggerated in the articles.
This has taken on a completely new dimension. In the past, you could usually recognize such fake sites very quickly - the addresses of the websites usually didn't match at all, sometimes the logos were distorted, you could see that they weren't the original news sites.
What's different now: The fake news sites can hardly be distinguished visually from the real ones. For the propaganda articles, the original pages around them were copied one-to-one. Even in the case of an imprint, the original page is always loaded. Furthermore, we are not dealing with three or four articles or videos that were just created, but with a very, very large number that we cannot yet quantify. And it is constantly growing.
Pay attention to the URL!
We can't emphasize it enough: Pay attention to the URL, this is the address line in the browser!
This is always visible on the PC, but on the smartphone it disappears as soon as you scroll down in an article, and the creators of the propaganda news sites also know this.
Very often the fake news sites do not have a “.de” ending (like bild.de, faz.de etc.), but rather endings like “.ltd”, “.asia” or “.vip”, which are therefore only in detail visible in the URL.
High potential for manipulation!
There is great potential for manipulation in false reports. These messages are sent to people who are not particularly political or even politically extreme. However, due to the structure and appearance of the imitation pages, many users cannot distinguish the news pages from their real templates. Anyone who falls for the fact that the content appears to come from established media will be influenced in their opinion formation.
That is the big problem, because in this way many people could get the impression that they have been lied to by the relevant media. The counterfeiters, in turn, do not recognize them.
The pages also use special wording. The fake reports use words that frame things very strongly, i.e. that steer people in a certain direction. For example, people talk about “parasites” when it comes to refugees from Ukraine. Likewise, the German federal government is always demonized and a Russia-friendly image is painted.
So far only Germany has been affected by this wave, but not Austria. Often there are small errors that point to a specific origin of the propaganda. For example, one of the fake posts mentions “Chancellor Angela Merkel,” while another contains occasional Cyrillic characters. This suggests that there are people at work who know Germany well, but who make mistakes in the details.
The content itself is traditionally distributed subliminally via social media multipliers and certain channels. Often from fake profiles that have only existed for a few months or weeks and whose profile picture was created by artificial intelligence. The people who then read these posts then share them. This creates the virality of fake news websites.
For advanced users: Pay attention to the age of the page!
There is a very useful site where you can tell the age of a site: https://whois.domaintools.com/
If you enter or copy the URL of a news site that seems suspicious to you on this page, you will find out who is hosting the site and how long the site has been on the Internet.
With the fake pages, it is very quickly apparent that the creators are using an anonymization service and that they have only been online for a few days:
The pages often don't exist for very long because they are either reported or deleted by the provider or the creators themselves - only to reappear somewhere else. During this time, they are widely shared on Facebook by new accounts with fake names and profile pictures.
Screenshots without sources are not evidence!
Screenshots of the fake news sites continue to be shared on social media even after the sites have been deleted - without attribution of course. Therefore our advice:
- If you are only shown a screenshot of a news site, ask for the source
- A “search for yourself” is not a reference to a source
- Every news site has search functions, but you will never find the relevant news there
- Expect to get a response like “The article was definitely censored” or something similar
- Rule of thumb: Anyone who claims must prove. Anyone who only shows a screenshot has the burden of proof. Anyone who doesn't want to or can't provide a source just wants to engage in propaganda
So don't let the serious appearance of a site mislead you: the devil is often hidden in the details.
If a URL has a suspicious ending (e.g. .ltd, .asia or .vip) and a news story sounds unreliable, google to see if other reputable news sites are reporting on it - because if they aren't, that's also a strong indication of one Fake.
Sources:
Meta
Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report: China and Russia
CIB Report
Related to the topic: Social security fraud by Ukrainians who enter the country via Flixbus?
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )