Between August 2023 and October 2024 alone, Meta earned approximately $338,000 from political ads from a Russian propaganda organization as part of a single disinformation campaign on Facebook. And that’s only in Europe, and even though the Troll Factory, which is ultimately subordinate to the Kremlin, was already on the sanctions lists of the EU, the US and Great Britain. This comes from the report “Impact through Design” published on Friday by Finnish research institute Czech First in collaboration with Reset.Tech in London and AI Forensics in Paris. The authors emphasize that the findings “raise serious questions about the role of META in enabling state-sponsored influence operations.”
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in the center The analysis focused on a promotional campaign with over 8,000 advertising banners On Facebook, which is supported by the Russian Social Design Agency (SDA). Along with Structura and Argon Labs, the Moscow agency is one of the initiators of the Kremlin-controlled doppelganger campaign, which has been running for two years. The focus was on the introduction of well-known media brands and related websites through which false reports were spread. The campaign now being investigated, which highlights only a small fraction of Russian propaganda campaigns, is said to be a further development of the doppelganger approach.
Experts estimate that the tested ads were clicked on by Facebook users in Germany, France, Poland and Italy more than 123,000 times. The Doppelganger operation was previously linked to influence operations in the United States, Israel & Company. it becomes clear How precise and sophisticated SDA can sometimes beAccording to the report, their ad posts are tailored to current political events and use “provocative narratives and visually appealing content” to maximize reach and impact.
Propaganda as a weapon against democracy
As an example, the authors highlight banners that took advantage of current events, such as Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, and sought to increase polarization within the targeted societies. The terrorist attack in a Moscow suburb in March 2024, which killed 145 people, was also the cause of false reports. Advertisements often appear within 48 hours of such events and attempt to influence public perception. Following the Hamas attacks on October 7, the SDA spread false claims that Ukraine had sold weapons to the terrorist organization.
The ads reached more than 237,000 accounts within two to three days and, according to the authors, underlined “the operation’s ability to weaponize current events for geopolitical narratives”. It is surprising that the SDA closely followed almost all reports about the campaign and evaluated their effectiveness.
The findings show that “Meta has significant deficiencies in its content moderation policies and compliance with its obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA).” “Despite claims to implement strict identity verification measures and transparency for political ads, the platform has repeatedly failed to stop SDA-linked campaigns.” There is a need for stronger supervision and enforcement mechanisms. Social media operators must ensure that “their systems are not used as weapons to undermine democratic processes.” The new meta course aimed at Donald Trump points in the opposite direction.
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