How the Kremlin launders disinformation around the globe

3 comments

1. Laundering information involves the gradual application of techniques such as disinformation, misappropriation, click-bait headlines, and the ‘Woozle effect’ – when fabricated or misleading citations are used repeatedly in laundered news items in an attempt to provide ‘evidence’ of their integrity.

   The information is then integrated into and spread around the information ecosystem through processes such as smurfing – a term borrowed from money laundering – where an actor sets up multiple accounts or websites to disseminate the information. There’s also what disinformation analysts call ‘Potemkin villages’, a network of accounts or platforms that share and endorse each other’s content, serving to amplify and propagate material.

   The goal of such dissemination techniques is to boost visibility while building credibility – based on the premise that audiences tend to trust information more if it’s widely reported by different actors or organisations.

2. I love how these articles, instead of having a positive effect on people, only make them more paranoid and believe that anything negative is the work of Russian disinformation. A protest? Russia, a fire? Russia, is there an economic fall? Russia.

   It’s like watching a modern red scare, the best weapon of the Soviet Union.

3. In reddit’s microcosmos kremlin bot are pretending to be Ukrainians and they flood the comment sections with negativity in high scale.