A Kremlin-affiliated Russian troll farm is conducting a disinformation marketing campaign aimed toward disrupting this yr’s U.S. presidential election, and in keeping with Microsoft, they’re centered on smearing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The corporate has launched a brand new report detailing the actions of two troll farms monitored by the Microsoft Risk Evaluation Middle.
These Kremlin-backed actors apparently struggled to search out their means shortly after President Biden resigned as a candidate, however in late August and early September, one in all them started spreading unfaithful movies and managed to rack up tens of millions of views . A video depicts alleged assaults by Harris supporters on Trump rally attendees. One other video featured an actor accusing Harris of being concerned in a 2011 hit-and-run that left a 13-year-old woman paralyzed. The second video was posted by a web site pretending to be a San Francisco media outlet a number of days in the past, and the video went viral on the Web.
In the meantime, a second troll farm stopped producing content material in regards to the 2024 Paris Olympics and commenced producing unfavorable footage of Harris. A pretend video reveals a billboard in New York Metropolis claiming Harris desires to vary the gender of her youngsters. It was initially posted on Telegram after which shared on X, the place it acquired over 100,000 views in just some hours.
Microsoft warned that because the election approaches, individuals ought to anticipate extra Russian-made disinformation supplies, together with extra staged and synthetic intelligence-edited movies, to unfold on-line. Earlier this month, the U.S. authorities indicted two staff of Russian state media RT, accusing them of planning to pay a Tennessee firm $10 million to distribute 2,000 propaganda movies on social media. The U.S. Treasury Division additionally sanctioned the Russian nonprofit ANO Dialog, which allegedly participated in a marketing campaign known as “Doppelganger” to create pretend web sites that appeared to U.S. readers to be authentic main information websites. Microsoft stated in a brand new report that it has suspended greater than 20 accounts associated to ANO Dialog.
Meta additionally not too long ago banned RT and different Russian state media for “overseas interference actions.” The corporate has seen Russian state-controlled media try and disrupt overseas governments and evade detection up to now, in keeping with information it shared with Engadget. It stated it hoped they’d proceed to aim “misleading affect via the Web”.
Nevertheless, it isn’t solely Russia that’s attempting to affect the end result of this yr’s U.S. presidential election. Microsoft, Google and even the federal authorities launched experiences in August that Iranian hackers had been attempting to spear-phishing a number of advisers to the Biden-Harris and Trump campaigns. Microsoft has additionally found that teams linked to the Iranian authorities have launched campaigns to affect votes in america. One of many teams created a web site attacking and insulting former President Donald Trump.
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