RUSSIAN MALIGN INFLUENCE CAMPAIGNS EXPAND ONTO BLUESKY: R ussian influence operation known as Doppelganger has expanded onto the social media platform Bluesky to spread anti-Ukraine and antisemitic messages, according to a report released by Alliance4Europe on January 27.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/policy_briefs/2025/01/31/russian-malign-influence-campaigns-expand-onto-bluesky/

by Alien_P3rsp3ktiv

12 comments

  1. Highlights:

    ***What is Doppelganger?***

    *Doppelganger started in 2022 and has targeted audiences across the United States, Europe, and Israel, seeking to undermine support for Ukraine, promote Kremlin-aligned interests, and influence elections. Doppelganger launched its first social media campaigns on Facebook and X. In September 2024, the U.S. government took down many of its websites and sanctioned its operators.*

    *Alliance4Europe’s report provides the first documented instance of Doppelganger on Bluesky. While the operation posted on Bluesky in English and multiple other languages, the report focused on its German activity in advance of the upcoming German elections. Doppelganger’s German-language content implied Germany only supported Israel and Ukraine because their presidents are Jewish, shared degrading messages about Ukranian women, and criticized German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz.*

    ***A Wave of Russian Malign Influence Strikes Bluesky***

    *Doppelganger’s Bluesky debut comes amid a broader wave of Russian influence operations on the platform, including operations known as Matryoshka and Portal Kombat.*

    *Matryoshka’s expansion to Bluesky, first reported in December 2024, has used artificial intelligence to imitate the voices of professors associated with leading institutions to lend false authority to the operation’s anti-Ukrainian messages.*

    *A lead researcher from VIGINUM, the French government agency specializing in identifying foreign malign influence campaigns, also identified Bluesky accounts associated with Portal Kombat. Portal Kombat spans websites that aggregate content from various overt and covert Russian propaganda outlets.*

    *FDD [Foundation for Defense of Democracies], together with Alliance4Europe, looked further into Russian propaganda’s penetration of Bluesky and found accounts associated with the Russian state media outlet RT.*

    *FDD and Alliance4Europe also found Bluesky accounts associated with pro-Kremlin shows such as Going Underground, which describes itself as independent but broadcasts on RT, and ¡Ahí les va!, a Spanish-language program that may at first appear unaffiliated with RT but bears RT’s logo on its primary website. All these accounts first appeared on Bluesky between September 2024 and January 2025.*

    *Smaller social media platforms like Bluesky provide America’s adversaries an opportunity to target more specific demographics than on larger platforms such as Facebook and X. At the same time, smaller platforms likely lack the internal resources large platforms possess to counter malign influence campaigns. This combination of factors renders smaller platforms particularly vulnerable to exploitation by nation-states in their malign influence campaigns.*

  2. Some useful banlists you can use in bluesky…

    * [gender trolls](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2hwwem55ce6djnk6bn62cstr/lists/3lbashmys6l2m) – accounts who bang on about genders and DEI etc. Typically generating outrage to send people down the rightwing funnel to end up out the other side pro-rus.

    * [Coordinated Inauthentic Accounts](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d7nr65djxrudtdg3tslzfiyr/lists/3lcm6ypfdj72r) – potential troll farm accounts.

    * [MAGA](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e4elbtctnfqocyfcml6h2lf7/lists/3l53cjwlt4o2s) – self explanatory, but people who typically feel more at home on TruthSocial or X.

  3. That was to be expected. Surprised it took them so long, honestly.

  5. I do not think there will be significant acceptance of anti-Ukraine/antisemitism on Bluesky. Users are essentially not of that ilk. Those that are remain with their fellow troglodytes on Twitter. Alas, I have seen some increase in trog trolling on Blueskye. That too was expected as Trumpian/Muskian stormtroops set about to foment chaos and totalitarianism.

  7. In 2025 they’re pretty easily identifiable and ignorable, it’s almost comical how easy it is.

    Call me strange but I actually secretly enjoying arguing with the odd troll or exposing a bot, it’s like a safari hunt.

  8. Well obviously. They’ve got their grubby hands in everything.

  10. How do they know the anti-semitism is coming from the Russians? Seems to me plenty of anti-semites flocked there to call for the genocide of the Jews.

  11. In Sept the US DOJ seized 2 dozen domains as part of a takedown of Doppelganger, which is an SDA (Social Design Agency) initiative.

    I guess now that DOJ is under Trump control it will be interesting to see if DOJ is still actively attacking ruzzian propaganda and disinformation campaigns. The Kremlin and its tools such as SDA are probably counting on intransigence on the part of DOJ.

    If so than Bluesky is going to have to step up bigtime, or it will soon be tarnished with the same brush as twitter.

  12. We have to keep reporting on this. That way when people read misinformation, they can question it. As opposed to just believing everything they see or read

Comments are closed.