Kremlin-linked Russian troll farms are running disinformation campaigns aimed at interfering with this year’s US presidential election, and according to Microsoft, they’re focusing their efforts on discrediting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. There is a company published a new report Details of the movements of two troll farms monitored by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.
These Kremlin-backed actors apparently struggled to find the right approach shortly after President Biden dropped out as a candidate, but in late August and early September, one of them began circulating obscure videos that garnered millions of views. In one of the videos, Harris supporters attacked Trump’s rally participants. Another video used an actor Charge Harris Participating in a 2011 hit-and-run incident that paralyzed a 13-year-old girl. The second video that went viral was posted by an old website a few days ago, which appears to be a San Francisco-based media outlet.
Meanwhile, a second troll farm stopped producing content about the 2024 Paris Olympics and started creating videos that cast Harris in a bad light. One of the fake videos featured a New York City billboard claiming to be Harris wants to change the sex of the children. It was first posted on Telegram, then shared on X, and in just a few hours, it got over 100,000 views.
Microsoft warned that people should expect to see more Russian-made disinformation material, including more staged and AI-edited videos, spread online as the election approaches. Earlier this month, U.S. Govt accused Two employees of Russia’s state media outlet RT have accused them of planning to pay a Tennessee company $10 million to distribute 2,000 propaganda videos on social media. The Treasury Department also sanctioned ANO Dialog, a Russian nonprofit organization allegedly involved in the so-called “Doppelganger” campaign for creating fake websites that would appear to American readers to appear as legitimate mainstream news sites. Microsoft said in a new report that it has suspended more than 20 accounts related to ANO Dialog.
Meta also recently RT is prohibited and other Russian state media “for foreign interference activities.” According to records the company shared with Engadget, it has seen Russian state-controlled media in the past attempt to interfere with foreign governments and avoid detection. He said he expected them to continue to try to “engage in deceptive influence attempts on the Internet.”
It is not only Russia that is trying to influence the results of this year’s presidential elections in the United States. Microsoft, Google and even the feds published reports in August that Iranian hackers had tried several advisors spear-fish Biden-Harris and Trump campaigns. Microsoft too found campaigns It was done by groups linked to the Iranian government to sway votes in the United States. One such group has created a website that attacks and insults former President Donald Trump.
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