WaPo-- Russians Are Promoting Fake Videos About Kamala Harris

[W. Niederhut]

Russians made video falsely accusing Harris of hit-and-run, Microsoft says

The fake narrative was one of several concocted attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate that went viral on social media, the company said.

 

September 17, 2024

SAN FRANCISCO — Russian propagandists are escalating attacks on the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris with false but widely circulated videos on social media, including one that featured an actor accusing Harris of a nonexistent hit-and-run that paralyzed a girl, Microsoft researchers said Tuesday.

That video was a viral hit, spread by X accounts with as a many as a half-million followers, despite first appearing on a newly minted San Francisco news outlet that soon vanished. Posts featuring the video racked up 7 million views on X alone, and were also on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

 

Another video manufactured an assault on an attendee of a rally for Republican candidate Donald Trump, garnering millions of views, Microsoft said. One depicted a fake New York billboard with vulgar messages saying Harris wanted to change children’s gender. It drew hundreds of thousands of views on X.

 

In all, Microsoft called out three Russian government-backed groups in addition to those described in federal charges last week against employees at propaganda network RT.

One group was “adept at grabbing headlines with its outlandish fake videos and scandalous claims,” Microsoft said, while another “will likely only escalate its targeting of the Harris-Walz campaign in the lead-up to Election Day.”

Microsoft described those and other smear jobs in its regular report on election-influence attempts. It said there will be another report before the November election. The latest findings suggest that the Russian government has not been daunted by previous exposures and the disruption of websites that masqueraded as mainstream news sites to push falsehoods. They also belie Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent claim that he supports Harris in the election.

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Monday that it was banning pages for state-run television outlet RT after the United States said the outlet was involved in intelligence activities as well as propaganda and announced sanctions against related companies.

Two weeks ago, the Justice Department indicted two RT employees, accusing them of laundering nearly $10 million through shell companies to covertly run a Tennessee-based media firm that posted videos by prominent conservative influencers seeking to undermine support for Ukraine. Last week, State Department officials said the campaign was a small part of covert information operations run by RT.

RT and other Russian government outlets, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “are no longer merely fire hoses of Russian propaganda and disinformation. They are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus.”

On Tuesday, Microsoft further outlined activity by six Russian hacktivist groups that claim to be independent but appear to work in tandem with the FSB security service, GRU military intelligence or other Russian government entities.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in any attempts to influence the American election.

Like the private companies Moscow is accused of using to sow disinformation without accountability, the hacking groups “offer a method for potentially laundering compromising information garnered from a hack-and-leak operation while maintaining a veil of plausible deniability,” Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center wrote. It said officials and the media “should be wary of overinflating the threat of these groups in the public forum yet should remain vigilant.”

Russians made videos falsely accusing Harris of hit-and-run, Microsoft says - The Washington Post

 

Edited 19 hours ago by W. Niederhut

[W. Niederhut]

 

Billionaire Elon Musk Shared Memes Made by FSB Propaganda Machine (msn.com)

September 17, 2024

Has Elon Musk’s careless posting finally caught up with him? Just one day after having to play off his horrific take on the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump as a “joke,” the Tesla CEO is back in the hot seat again for sharing anti-Ukrainian content that, as it turns out, was actually generated by a Russian psychological operations team. The meme in question, posted by Musk last October, features a strain-faced President Volodymyr Zelensky with the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.” Several outlets, including RFE/RL, have now obtained leaked documents that reveal the image had been created by the Social Design Agency. A Moscow-based company, the group was hired by the Kremlin to use propaganda and disinformation to sow discord over Western support for Ukraine amid the conflict. Who’s laughing now?