Fake Russian accounts target Ukraine on social media, claims Meta

Pro-Russian groups orchestrate various disinformation campaigns on social media using fake profiles or hacked accounts to portray Ukraine as a mere pawn in Western hands, Meta claimed on Sunday.

Read alsoMeta (Facebook) takes stock of its efforts to build the metaverse

Meta has shut down fake accounts and blocked the sharing of web addresses linking to sites spreading fake news, said David Agranovich, the company's chief threat officer.

These groups

said in a blog post, pointing out that it had blocked a large number of fake Russian state-affiliated accounts.

“In some cases, they used profile photos which (…) were probably generated using artificial intelligence techniques”

, adds the group.

The small network of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts targeted people in Ukraine, helping to spread false information about that country's efforts to defend itself against the Russian invasion.

Profiles linked to Russia, according to Meta

This network has been identified by Meta as being linked to people in Russia and Ukraine, as well as NewsFront and SouthFront media organizations in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. According to the United States, NewsFront and SouthFront are disinformation outlets that take orders from Russian intelligence services.

These are among more than a dozen entities sanctioned by Washington for trying to influence the 2020 US presidential election,

of Russia.

Among the false claims published by the sites: the West has betrayed Ukraine, and Ukraine is a failed state.

Read alsoFake news, interference, fight against abstention: Meta and Google are preparing for the presidential election

The invasion of Ukraine was the occasion for an outbreak of fake news on the internet, in particular on social networks, a phenomenon that has become recurrent with each outbreak of war or conflict.