Russia's disinformation campaign evaded Meta's efforts to stop it

Three organizations that track disinformation online say Russian organizations linked to the Kremlin's covert influence campaigns continue to use Facebook despite Western regulations barring companies from doing business with them. Posted more than 8,000 political ads on Book.

The Russian organization Social Design Agency escaped lax enforcement by Facebook, targeting an estimated 338,000 users in Europe in the 15 months ending in October, despite the platform itself highlighting the threat. Three organizations announced that they had placed advertisements worth US dollars. The report was released on Friday.

The Social Design Agency has been under punitive sanctions in the European Union since 2023 and in the United States since April last year for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media. The ad campaign on Facebook raises “serious questions about the platform's compliance” with American and European law, the report said.

The report comes as Facebook's parent company Meta announced changes to the rules for content allowed on the social media platform, including eliminating fact-checking that flags and removes posts. . The changes are almost certain to intensify Meta's standoff with European regulators over how it handles disinformation and other harmful content.

The changes include automatic restrictions on content related to race and gender that could run afoul of the European Union's Digital Services Act, which requires social media platforms to limit the spread of illegal and harmful activity and disinformation online. Includes lifting of restrictions. Last year, the 27 member states announced they had launched an investigation into Meta over a lack of oversight over deceptive advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to reference the company's regulatory battles with the European Union when he announced its content policy last week, and asked President-elect Donald J. Trump: He called for a “counterattack against foreign governments.” Trying to limit freedom of speech.

Social Design Agency is a Moscow-based public relations firm that runs sophisticated influence operations known as doppelgängers, according to U.S. and European officials.

Since 2022, doppelgangers have been creating cartoon memes and online clones of real news sites such as Le Monde and the Washington Post, often spreading propaganda and disinformation about the war in Ukraine.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the report, but pointed to the company's own public warnings about doppelgangers.

Meta first identified this campaign in a threat analysis published in 2022 and linked it to the Agency for Social Design. Once discovered, they have repeatedly blocked their efforts, prompting campaign organizers to change their tactics to avoid detection.

In a separate threat analysis in December, Mehta said, “We no longer see doppelgangers attempting to direct people using our apps to their own domains that mimic news or government websites. No,” he said.

Meta's analysis said the campaign appeared to have had little impact, but the Russian group continued its efforts on other social media sites, including Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr and Medium.

The organizations documenting the campaign – Finnish research firm Check First, London's Reset.Tech and Paris' AI Forensics – focused on efforts to sway Facebook users in France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Doppelgangers are also said to be influencing activities in the United States, Israel, and other countries, but these are not included in the report's findings.

The investigation is based on thousands of internal documents from the Social Design Agency obtained by two European news outlets, Delphi Estonia and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The Social Design Agency did not respond to a request for comment.

The document included screenshots of the group's interactions with Meta's Ad Manager, a platform for companies to place and track ads on Facebook, using fake usernames. The document allowed researchers to reconstruct the scale and cost of Russia's intelligence operations in more detail than usual.

Researchers estimate that the ad generated more than 123,000 user clicks and generated at least $338,000 in revenue for Meta in the European Union alone. The researchers acknowledged that this figure is only an incomplete example of the Russian agency's efforts.

In addition to promoting Russia's views on Ukraine, the station covers major news events such as the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the terrorist attack on the outskirts of Moscow last March that killed 145 people. Advertisements were posted accordingly. Advertisements often appeared within 48 hours and attempted to shape public perception of events.

After the October 7 attack, ads pushed false claims that Ukraine sold weapons to Hamas. The researchers' report said the ads reached more than 237,000 accounts within a few days, “highlighting the operation's ability to weaponize current events in favor of a geopolitical narrative.” .

Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of Brussels-based non-profit research organization EU Disinfo Lab, said the report highlighted the need for Meta to do more to combat disinformation and the EU's He said it emphasizes the need for regulators to hold the company accountable.

“For Europe to become a sovereign nation with its own laws, those laws must be enforced by platforms and other actors,” he said. “The lack of proper enforcement of these laws raises serious concerns about sovereignty and whether Europe can ensure that its laws are respected within its own territory.”