The Internet Research Agency also hired genuine involuntary independent hounds in Facebook operation removed
Last march 1, 2020 at 22:31 CEST
The Russian firm that intervened in the 2016 US election created a left-wing news publication, endowed it with AI-generated images, and engaged true independent reporters in a new influence operation detected and eliminated via Facebook, the corporation said Tuesday.
The web research agency’s (IRA) most recent operation was still in diapers when it detected with FBI advice, according to Facebook’s security policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher, the network had thirteen accounts and two pages, with approximately 14,000 subscribers in total.
Facebook accounts and pages were designed to reinforce PeaceData.net, an English and Arabic online page that claims to be a “global news organization” but is written in a fictitious way.PeaceData’s “personal” portraits were created at Generative Adversarial Networks, a type of AI that can produce realistic face photographs, according to Graphika, a social media analytics company that produced a report on the IRA operation.
“They did everything they could to create elaborate fictional characters, to make the fake stories as genuine as possible,” Gleicher said.
Many characters had Twitter profiles and LinkedIn.Twitter said Tuesday that he had suspended five PeaceData-related accounts for “manipulating platforms that we can reliably characterize Russian state actors.”The company said the tweets on the accounts were of “bad quality” and “spam” and would block links to PeaceData content.LinkedIn did not respond to a request.
Much of PeaceData’s content was copied from other websites, although some were produced through involuntary independent journalists.Ads on Upwork and Guru.com had a constant rate of $75 for amateur writers.The main themes of the site included armed conflicts, human rights violations (particularly through the United States and the United Kingdom), corruption and the environment, as well as WikiLeaks, the coronavirus pandemic and the unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory.
PeaceData policy in the United States described the country as “bellicose and lawbreaker abroad while plagued by racism, Covid-19 and fierce capitalism in his country,” according to the report.The exit was negative for Donald Trump, but Graphika discovered that his remedy to his Democratic rival Joe Biden and vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris was “remarkable for his hostile tone.”
PeaceData’s content, directed at the United States, designed to “create a left-wing audience and away from Biden’s campaign,” according to Graphika’s analysis. Content targeting the UK will also attract left-wing audiences with attacks on Labor leader Keir Starmer for being too centrist.
The operation targeted Bernie Sanders and Democratic Socialists in the United States and Jeremy Corthroughn’s supporters in the UK by publishing one of the accounts, the fictional “Alex Lacusta,” with links to articles through PeaceData in Facebook affiliate groups.
The IRA also used “involuntary users” to verify and obtain permission from Facebook to serve classified political ads in the United States, the company said.Facebook implemented the licensing procedure for political advertisers after the 2016 election, when the IRA was able to spend about $100,000, some on rubles, in classified ads targeting the U.S. electorate with divisive messages.
Facebook and Graphika concluded that the operation had been detected and eliminated before causing significant damage.
“This follows a steady trend in which specific Russian players have taken a step forward to hide who they are, but their effect is getting smaller and stuck before,” Gleicher said.”These players are trapped between a rock” and a difficult place: managing a giant network that gets temporarily stuck or managing a small network with limited range.”
“The biggest fortune of the operation, to the extent that it has had one, is its ability to co-opt unwitting authors to write its contents,” Graphika’s analysis concludes.”The thirteen IRAs have succeeded in deceiving this target audience; seem to have reached a much higher level.”
Twitter has asked “governments around the world” to avoid lying to users with operations.
“Regardless of the low-level effect in this case, governments around the world will have to put an end to these practices,” the company said in a tweeted statement.”They are undemocratic. Attempts to manipulate our service to undermine democracy, through national and foreign actors, will face strict implementation of our policies.
Agencies have contributed to the reporting of