4 days before the US election, Russian state disinfo is at full blast.
Matryoshka bots that only post intentional fake videos have made a record-breaking 21 posts. Most of them are targeting the US elections.
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2/13
If you encounter in the wild any of the videos below, please let me know: I'm interested if any of these gets any traction.
A large part of the following collection were contributed by dTeam; others were also found by ourselves.
3/13
"Votes of 500K dead Americans will lead Harris to victory"
4/13
"Three groups were arrested for rigging early voting with mail-in ballots. Don't expect elections to be transparent and honest. Many such groups are acting on behalf of Democrats."
5/13
"Hundreds of early ballots destroyed in Washington state, Vancouver. When homes of suspects were searched, all were found in possession of incendiary mixtures and Kamala Harris propaganda materials"
6/13
"Democrats asked multiple investigative outlets to publish dirt on Trump. Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins refusal expains why WaPo refused to campaign for Harris"
7/13
"If Harris wins, 40M migrants entering the US in 4 years will lead to state-to-state visas and eventually disintegrate the country."
8/13
"Bezos made an effective move making WaPo refuse to campaign for Harris. It brought +300K subscribers to WaPo, which reflects a real position of the candidates"
9/13
"For comparing Trump to Hitler, Harris owes apology to the entire Jewish community. Such comparison is insulting to the Holocaust victims."
10/13
"Campaigning for Harris puts so much pressure on her own voters that it leads to suicides among her active supporters and[!] LGBTQ+ individuals"
11/13
"Over 12 sexual harassment allegations against Tim Walz are only a fraction of the actual number of cases. None were accepted for consideration for formal reasons. They will be no longer ignored if Trump wins"
12/13
"YouTube deliberately blocks Trump's videos to reduce his quotability. That will have a little effect"
13/13
"Texas as a separate state will bring happiness to people and industries, according to AI"
* a record-breaking 21 posts *in a single day*.
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🧵 As pro-Kremlin disinfo network Matryoshka expanded to TikTok, it started to gain quite an engagement.
This is the first such a case that we encountered.
Fake video says: "Every third refugee from Ukraine intends to leave Poland after the presidential election, a poll shows"
2/4
While we can't validate authenticity of Views, Likes, Bookmarks or Reposts counts, the most popular replies look like the video has resonated with the audience
🧵 Russian state-aligned disinfo bot network codenamed Matryoshka has expanded to TikTok yesterday, complementing its regular X/Twitter presence.
On the same day the network has likely stopped its activity on BlueSky. 1/9
2/9
Matryoshka is infamous for posting only fake visuals: doctored photos of street art; videos and front pages impersonating media outlets, universities and public agencies.
So the very fact of a visual posted by the 🪆 network is on its own a strong indicator of a forgery.
@franceinter @le_Parisien 3/9
Why we believe they started TikTok only yesterday? We could not find similar TT posts / accounts related to Moldova / Sandu for 3 months to date.
While on X and BlueSky, 🪆 is for over 6 weeks now running a smear campaign targeting Maria Sandu:
🧵 Russian state is happy to manipulate public debate following the Pavel @Durov, @FranceDiplo / DGSE statements on Romanian elections.
These fake videos and covers impersonating 🇫🇷 state agencies and reputable media brands have been posted on May 20 by Matryoshka bot network.
2/ Most of the fake visuals amplify @Durov's claims and exploit the controversy to damage trust to 🇫🇷 government.
However, the bigger picture seems to be that Russian state accuses the West of its own crimes, following Kremlin's presumed earlier interference to 🇷🇴 elections.
3/ Fake 🎬 @EuroNews reinforces Durov's claim with an alleged note from Romanian MFA:
"🇷🇴 has sent a note of protest to the 🇫🇷 govt for interfering the elections with the help of Telegram.
🇷🇴 recommends 🇫🇷 to mind its own business: terrorism, illegal migration, unemployment"
🧵 Pro-Kremlin disinfo network "Matryoshka" this Friday targeted the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter) with a special episode.
With hijacked RSF logo, they falsely labelled several genuine videos* as fake using a fraudulent 'INFOX' watermark.
1/7
2/7
As @_ColinGerard points out, this could be a direct response to RSF's recent report exposing how Matryoshka / Storm-1679 is repeatedly impersonating RSF to promote Kremlin's narratives:
"As a part of a corrupt scheme, Macron knowingly imposed COVID-19 vaccines that harmed French people's fertility, dramatically shifting birth rates in favor of immigrant populations."
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As in many previous episodes across many campaigns, Matryoshka used AI-cloned voices here to repurpose pre-existing authentic videos from scholars to allegedly claim any talking points deemed useful to Kremlin at the moment.
3/4
This episode is a part of ongoing anti-Macron campaign.
Lasting for over a year now, its latest trigger was likely Macron's March 03 statement on extending the France’s nuclear umbrella to the European allies.
🧵 In 3 days, pro-Kremlin fake-video operation received 3 debunking statements from FBI, totaling 1.5M views and counting.
This operation is active since at least Sept 2023. My team was first to report this operation back in Jan 2024, we codenamed it Matryoshka 🪆 (Russian Doll)
2/
Never before has Matryoshka gained that much attention from a govt agency, in the US or overseas, at the low cost of a dozen fake videos, which is literally half of its daily(!) capacity.
These statements alone gave so much airtime that it could not possibly dream of.
3/ This is what will possibly happen next:
💡 Matryoshka will be more often impersonating govt agencies than it was doing before, for as long as that keep resulting in public statements from those agencies.