New court documents reveal that Russia is keeping a very, very long list of influencers to spread its propaganda.
The Russian disinformation plot revealed in a Justice Department indictment this week may just be the tip of the iceberg, according to newly unsealed court documents.
On Wednesday, the DOJ announced it would seize 32 internet domains linked to a larger Kremlin scheme to promote disinformation and influence the 2024 election. The Russian campaign, known as Doppelganger, uses AI-generated content to create “fake news” boosted through social media with the aim of electing Donald Trump.
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Of particular note, the documents released Wednesday included an affidavit that noted a Russian company is keeping a list of more than 2,800 influencers world wide, about one-fifth of whom are based in the United States, to monitor and potentially groom to spread Russian propaganda. The affidavit does not mention the full list of influencers, but is still a terrifying indicator of how deep the Russian plot to interfere in U.S. politics really goes.
The affidavit does not mention the full list of influencers, but is still a terrifying indicator of how deep the Russian plot to interfere in U.S. politics really goes.
Well, why not? Name and shame all of them. Normal political ads are required to tell you who paid for them (even if they only do it in the fine print). There’s no reason not to hold these schmucks to the same standard just because it’s TikTok vids or whatever instead of magazine or TV ads.
Not a lawoligist, but I suspect they plan on pressing charges ;-)
This is a list of people “to monitor and potentially groom”. You can’t exactly charge someone with “being monitored”.
Not to say collaboration isn’t happening—it sounds like it absolutely is, but this is not the list of collaborators.
Fair point. In my defense I hit a paywall and just kind of gave up, did a bit of assuming there 😅
Wont be in time for the election though, so the damage will be done
I feel like they already got their money’s worth on interfering with elections.
They nabbed up several former Soviet republics and then publicly humiliated the states with the 2016 American election.
Say what you want about Putin, be he’s a helluva spy.
Yeah those intelligence estimates about being able to take over Ukraine in a couple of weeks and they’d be greeted as liberated was some top tier spycraft.
Really Putin is kinda shit at the spy stuff. Just that it’s super easy to acquire assets when there’s a lot of people that only care about making money and don’t ask a lot of questions about where it’s coming from.
Say what you want about Putin, be he’s a helluva spy.
He’s so good that when he got intel that Kiev would fall in 3 days, he didn’t bother to check the validity of that info and instead went on confidently to…not take Kiev at all.
So: I’ll say what I want about Putin. He’s a monster, a liar, a thief, an unimaginative, uncreative leader, a terrible commander, and a shit spy. Putin lucked out on a saving roll. Period. Don’t elevate him any higher than the mud he walks on.
And he tries to never test his reflex saves and poison saves by keeping at least 10 meters of desk between him and any NPCs!
The 2015 propaganda campaign was a thing to watch though. I expected it to be more of a historical landmark by now. Instead, we’re still living it.
Eh, they’re small potatoes. I think they need to go after the social media companies for allowing this to happen. You’re never going to get anywhere by trying to go after idiots that are just saying whatever they think will get them promoted in by the algorithm. It’s the companies that make algorithms that can be easily manipulated by bots from a foreign adversary that need to be shamed. And asked some hard questions about what they knew and when they knew it.
The affidavit does not mention the full list of influencers […]
Well, why not? Name and shame all of them.
FTOP:
keeping a list of more than 2,800 influencers world wide […] to monitor and potentially groom
You want to persecute the victims? These people are being targeted by the Russian state and probably haven’t done anything wrong. They should be protected from that, and also from those who are too quick to judge before they understand the situation.
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Wikipedia about this sourceI’d like to see that list.
Alongside the list of influencers US is paying to spread its propaganda.
Why now, FBI?
I don’t know how we are supposed to just think “oh what a co-inky-dink”. Maybe I’m missing some timeline stuff here but I keep seeing DOJ action based on unsealed FBI stuff. Great, but when was it sealed? They probably have sealed documents that say the sky is blue too.
Probably because the Russians kicked up their campaign this year as the battle of Donesk went poorly for them.
Russia realizes that the #1 factor in their war for the Ukrainian East depends on getting Trump elected and the Republicans cutting aid.
The only reason Russia got Adviika was because Republicans cut aid between Nov 2023 and all of winter 2024. Shell hunger they called it, as the Ukrainians ran out of ammo and were forced to retreat from their fortress city.
Russia wants that to happen again. So they’re kicking up their influence campaigns.
☝️ Found one
Nice pitchfork.
if you’ve seen enough pitchforks to be an expert on them, i consider that to be a red flag
I’d just like to point out that Trump won’t be sentenced for his crimes committed to cheat in the 2016 election until after the 2024 election.
The justice system can move slowly, especially on career-defining cases.
Why now? Because it is happening now.
You expect them to wait until after the election or something?
Once an investigation culminates and it’s time to roll up the targets, this is what happens. They have whole procedures for this, written down in books… You know the law.
Where are my republican “there is no Russian influence in the election” now?
They’re currently brainstorming and waiting for their orders from fox “news”. I expect we’ll see a bunch of posts here in a few days about how it’s all bullshit and blown out of proportion. Watch the names too, they’ll all be accounts created a year or so ago and haven’t posted for about 7 months.
I don’t listen to the radio but my coworkers (school bus drivers) do so I overhear it from time to time. News reports keep mentioning “foreign interference in our elections” but scrupulously avoid mentioning a) it’s Russia, and b) it’s Russia interfering on behalf of Trump and the Republicans. Even fucking NPR is like this, most of the time. It should be obvious that any Republicans hearing this sort of “news” will believe it’s a problem afflicting Democrats.
Shhhh…no Russian
No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet!
They’ll still be saying that because they don’t actually care about facts or evidence
They will never hear about this in a non-obfuscated way
read the news
Remember: If your politicians say there is no Russian interference in your elections, they are the ones who have been funded.
Cool, so just how many wars is Russia trying to fight at the moment?
About damn time. Could have used this 8+ years ago. Might have stopped Drump’s term in office.
The only person who did anything helpful got sent to jail (reality winner)
still haven’t got used to that being her actual name.
terrifying scale
barely a percentage point compared to the fossil fuel industry’s war on Green Energy
I suppose you could reasonably argue that Rex Tillerson and Vladimir Putin were already joined at the hip. But the US advertising and influencing industry is vast - $515B annually and growing. The Russians aren’t even in the top ten of foreign influence peddlers. FFS, the Saudis bought golf.
Wah but whatabout
Russia might not spend as much money on propaganda as some other entities, but they punch above their weight in terms of tactics and effectiveness.
Saudis aren’t trying to get Trump elected and directly meddle in the election.
And sure, the Saudis whitewash themselves and try to make us forget about Jamal. But Russia influence is really bad.
I’m not necessarily against foreign influence. Ukrainians have a right to make their case to us for example. But the Russian style disinfo is leading to conspiracy theories and a degeneration of our society.
Saudis aren’t trying to get Trump elected
The Israelis are, though.
But Russia influence is really bad.
US business interests have more influence over Russian foreign policy than Russians have on the US.
Russia is quite sanctioned, and the remaining US Business interest in Russia was looted / stolen by the Russians.
The business connection between USA and Russia is basically gone. Most (IE Elon Musk) are now making huge moves towards China now.
What remains are RT and other Russian disinfo groups
The business connection between USA and Russia is basically gone.
Clearly not, or Russians wouldn’t be able to slide cash into the pockets of social media influencers so easily.
Clearly not, or Russians wouldn’t be able to slide cash into the pockets of social media influencers so easily.
They didn’t. They got caught by the FBI and now we have massive news articles proving Russian influence. They literally just got caught, despite their best efforts at hiding.
Now comes the hard work at figuring out which of these 2800 influencers are fucking traitors… and which ones were just caught up in the mess. But someone in there had to have known that Russian money was part of this scheme.
They got caught by the FBI
After paying off the podcasters
Yes. That is how crimes work. The crime happens and then the FBI looks at you afterwards.
Are you… American? This crap is taught at grade school level.
Lol yes they are. They’re part owners of Twitter, which became a pro-Trump cesspool. That alone is orders of magnitude bigger than this Russian thing.
Yes, what about this thing that has nothing to do with the subject of Russia influencing elections?
What’s terrifying about buying off a couple of podcasters? The scale is dwarfed by any number of other countries.
Yes, what is terrifying about Russia paying podcasters to spread pro-Russian propaganda, and social media posters trying to deflect from that story?
Let’s play a little game of question and answer. For science. I bet you answer one. Do you think it was only a couple podcasters? What other countries do you think are worse with the misinformation than Russia? Where’s your proof for such a claim? Your feelings?
AIPAC has entered the chat, and has money to spend.
barely a percentage point compared to the fossil fuel industry’s war on Green Energy
That’s not really relevant in this context, though, is it? Maybe a better comparison would be 2024 election spending by foreign-connected PACS. According to opensecrets.org, the “nearly $10 million” allegedly distributed by RT employees is equivalent to the sum of all other foreign pac money donated to the GOP this cycle. It’s certainly not “dwarfed by any other country” as you spuriously claimed.
Saudi sportswashing and other shenanigans are also cause for concern. That in no way lessens the severity of this problem.
That’s not really relevant
It’s illustrative of a system of “influencing” that Americans drown in daily. Russian propaganda peddlers are peeing into the sewer.
The panic is over the “Russian”-ness of this media. But the machine that manufacturers consent is merely on loan.
Well Russia is part of that fossil fuel industry too, and they also hire lobbyists to push fossil fuels
It’s a big club and you ain’t in it
Laughs in AIPAC
AIPAC is based in the US and there is no evidence of foreign funds. I know it’s shocking to hear, but there is a large Jewish population in the US that happens to endorse Israel.
The entities in this indictment went out of their way to circumvent FARA
AIPAC is based in the US and there is no evidence of foreign funds
Thank you so much for mentioning this, I’ve seen wayyyyy too many people say that AIPAC is foreign interference with no backing.
So all Russia needs to do is register ARPAC inside the US and no-one can touch them.
No…To get around FARA they could never fund it, or ever coordinate with its leadership, just how AIPAC is funded entirely by US citizens and is ran entirely by US citizens, and has zero connection to the Israeli government.
Which makes sponsoring an organization like this incredibly risky, which is why almost no one does it.
Then so too can the American Russian Public Affairs Committee be funded entirely by US citizens, ran entirely by US citizens, and have zero visible connection to the Russian government.
and have zero visible connection to the Russian government.
No connections at all unless abiding by FARA yes, that would be legal. That’s not even close to what happened here.
So we agree AIPAC should register under FARA. Sign here
You need evidence to substantiate that FARA was circumvented by funneling funds from foreign entities.
If US citizens want to set up an entity and fund a lobbying group that supports Russia they are allowed to do so, but the money has to originate from US sources. Maybe take a few minutes to understand how the law works.
You need evidence to substantiate that FARA was circumvented by funneling funds from foreign entities.
Why? Surely all PACs are fully transparent about the sources of their funds. Every dollar donated can be attributed to US citizens and, in turn, they can prove none of their income came from overseas.
Yea. Except that’s not how any of this works. You have a really cartoon level understanding of how finance works and how these orgs are audited. The world is not a James Bond movie where some rando hacks a linux terminal and breaks into the IMF.
Arguing about levels of understanding is irrelevant.
The point is that whatever works for AIPAC can be replicated for the Russian equivalent ARPAC.
It’s been a really common talking point on right on the alt right for a while. To this day, no evidence has been substantiated to support this claim.
It’s a major talking point in the pro-Palestinian crowd too. Though I feel like that group is shifting towards being alt right for this and many other talking points they have in common.
Bro. The traitor John Roberts has opened up the floodgates of foreign money in our political system. Come on, now.
4/5 are outside the US, does that mean most are in the EU?
Yes, even goverments. For example orban in #orbanistan (hungary), fico in slovakia controlled putin. There are also parties controlled by putin, like afd in germany, le pen’s party in france, also the brexit guy nigel farage putin’s puppet
How else do you think AfD won so big in Thuringia and Saxony?
And centrists will imagine that all of it is localized entirely on lemmy, in the form of anyone to their left.
Somebody should take a long look at 🦚CNBC as well
What are you implying here, I don’t get it.
What a completely idiotic right wing Trumper comment
To me, this is the most interesting bit of the article
They targeted gamers and chatroom users, who they described as the “backbone of the right-wing trends in the US segment of the Internet,” [ … ]
We can kind of keep tabs on X or Facebook, but what goes down in Discord gamer chats is largely out of sight. I wish someone could drag more of this content out into the light of day where we could all see it.
Lol, so aparently right wing will be lead by weabos and gamers, not by ultra religious men and women?
~~You think Microsoft can’t keep tabs on what’s said in discord servers? ~~ hmm nevermind, looks like that purchase did not go through. Still, they can absolutely monitor discord chat, and even voice chat. It is relatively common these days to have voice recordings transcribed automatically into text files, saved, and searchable. Even video games do that these days. Overwatch in particular does this for certain because they announced so with the release of Overwatch 2. I would assume all Blizzard games do this by now.
You absolutely don’t want to see half the shit said in discord.
It’s all awful.
That’s why I want someone to summarize a sanitized version for me … so I have some sort of heads up on the next trend in stochastic terrorism without having to pluck my eyes out.
Is anyone really surprised by this? Russia hasn’t changed much in this particular way since before WWII ;).
Not really, but it’s nice to see the receipts. The indictments are pretty damning
Yes, yes it is 👍
