A Russian operation continues to spread disinformation on X and Facebook with a new report looking into how their posts target EU countries.
ADVERTISEMENTA new report finds a coordinated Russian disinformation campaign continues its operations on X and Meta in the EU despite an investigation into their conduct.
The Counter Disinformation Network (CDN), a collective of 130 professional fact-checkers led by non-profit Alliance4Europe, found over 1,300 pro-Russian posts from June 4 to 28 resembling the Russian Doppelganger campaign, a targeted disinformation operation that "relies on imitating legitimate media entities” to spread “narratives beneficial to Russia.
Doppelganger created "inauthentic pages" on Meta and X where they distributed content in various European languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Polish and Ukrainian, the report found.
"This report shines a light on insufficient action on the part of platforms that allows for such activities to persist," it says.
The CDN report follows another similar report from non-profit AI Forensics that found 3,826 pages of pro-Russian propaganda that reached 38 million users from August 2023 to March 2024.
The EU is already investigating Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for disseminating deceptive advertisements and disinformation, and Elon Musk’s platform X for information manipulation.
Using divisive domestic issues to support pro-Russian political parties
The posts relied on a few key themes in different languages: criticism of government support for Ukraine, exploiting divisive domestic issues like inflation, and undermining Western alliances like NATO and the EU.
Doppelganger campaigns in Germany, France and Italy supported far-right political parties or "candidates perceived as being positively inclined towards Russia," the report continues.
There were more posts in German than in other languages, according to the report.
The German posts most often targeted the government for its policies and sometimes explicitly supported the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) or Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) parties.
Some posts insinuated the German government did not do enough to protect spectators at the European Football Championships, which were taking place in the country at the time.
"This subset of German posts paints a picture of an incompetent government, neglecting its people and possibly posing a danger to economic stability," the report says.
"Posts exploiting polarising issues are likely aimed at unsettling the German public and diminishing trust in their government, possibly by extension eroding trust in democratic systems altogether".
To promote their content on both X and Meta, some Doppelganger accounts had profile pictures that seemed to depict "real people" from the countries that they targeted, the report continues.
Doppelganger accounts used symbols and spaces to "obfuscate words (or URLs) that could trigger automated content moderation," called 'spamouflage' by the report authors on Meta.
ADVERTISEMENTA few weeks after the initial posts, the manufactured accounts would comment for reach, garnering more views on the platforms, the authors continued.
On Meta, report authors found at least 98 ads that boosted Doppelganger-related pro-Russian content in France, Germany, Poland and Italy.
The report authors said the posts on X received a total of 4.6 million views or 2,025 views per post.
'No way' to list misinformation on Meta
On July 15, report authors flagged the original posts to X through the Digital Services Act (DSA)’s mandatory reporting system on the platform.
ADVERTISEMENTSix weeks later, the report says only one user behind some of the 623 original posts that were still online and flagged to X was removed from the platform.
Authors noted the 98 ads on Facebook were from accounts that were already taken down or no longer being used, so they didn’t need to notify the platform about them.
Euronews Next reached out to X and Meta but did not receive an immediate reply.
Meta’s community guidelines say "there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list" of what should and should not be labelled misinformation and later removed.
ADVERTISEMENTThe company removes misinformation that it says "is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm," or that will interfere with “the functioning of political processes”.
The platform also includes labels for what it considers "manipulated media" if it uses a photorealistic image, video or audio that has a "particularly high risk of… deceiving the public on a matter of public importance".
Meanwhile, it is prohibited on X to share "synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people," the platform’s Help Center says.
X removes media from its platform that is clearly fabricated, shared with false context, and media that could result in widespread "confusion on public issues, impact public safety, or cause serious harm".
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