AI-powered network of Russia-based websites masquerading as local American newspapers is pumping out fake stories targeting the US election, investigation finds

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨0x815@feddit.org⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c72ver6172do

cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/405394

A former Florida police officer who relocated to Moscow is one of the key figures behind it.

Dozens of bogus stories aimed at influencing US voters and sowing distrust ahead of November’s election. Some have been roundly ignored but others have been shared by influencers and members of the US Congress.

For example, one of these stories was published on a website called The Houston Post – one of dozens of sites with American-sounding names which are in reality run from Moscow - and alleged that the FBI illegally wiretapped Donald Trump’s Florida resort.

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Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
We’ve found whole buildings full of paid online trolls poisoning the dialogue and it’s like the whole media industry agreed to stop talking about it. Now they don’t even need humans to do that.

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- TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Because all the US media is run by wealthy Republicans.
  
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  - Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The civil war was in abatement, but it never did end.
    
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- homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  “Gone are the days of Russia purchasing ads in roubles, or having pretty obvious trolls that are sitting in a factory in St. Petersburg,” said Nina Jankowicz, head of the American Sunlight Project, a non-profit organisation attempting to combat the spread of disinformation.
  
  Ms Jankowicz was briefly director of the short-lived US Disinformation Governance Board, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security designed to tackle false information.
  
  “Now we’re seeing a lot more information laundering,” she said - using a term referring to the recycling of fake or misleading stories into the mainstream in order to obscure their ultimate source.
  
  “Information laundering”
  
  A story which originated on DC Weekly, claiming that Ukrainian officials bought yachts with US military aid, was repeated by several members of Congress, including Senator J D Vance and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
  
  Yep. Perjury Traitor Greed in the mix with an ex-Marine Florida Cop on the lam in Moscow. That is correct. Yes. Who had that on their bingo cards? Everyone? Cool. Cool cool cool.
  
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555_1@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They’re masquerading as local lemmy users too. I see you comrade.

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- Pacmanlives@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I have noticed a lot more down votes in certain political posts the past few months that for sure
  
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- Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Dangerously close to the “anyone that thinks like me is a bot”
  
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  - andyburke@fedia.io ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Functionally, when someone will not engage in good faith, what's the difference between a human and a bot?
    
    If someone is not arguing cordially and supporting their position with facts, I don't care if they're human or not, they're a bot.
    
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  - anon6789@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I agree. In a way, I’d prefer the majority of the bad takes I see to be from bots or paid actors, but from listening to family and coworkers long enough, it’s easy to see you don’t need to script or pay people to get terrible opinions. Just give them a platform and they’ll unfortunately provide themselves to no end.
    
    If it was fake, it’d be easier to write them off. It’s much harder to accept that we share the same reality.
    
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  - psmgx@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    At any given time 17-40%, roughly, of any social media platform posters are automated bots. Plenty of legitimate uses, such as media manager applications, or automatic reposters, curation, etc.
    
    And IIRC this also included the front-ends for Mechanical Turk style human gopers and 50-cent Army posters, etc. so maybe not so legitimate…
    
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- Virkkunen@fedia.io ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  At this point we should just rename it to Lenny
  
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  - 555_1@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Hah! ;)
    
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TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Oh look another story for Republicans to pretend never happened

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jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Florida police officer moves to Moscow?

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- cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  wikipedia articles about him have been deleted twice:
  
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…/John_M._Dougan (2016)
  
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…/John_Mark_Dougan (2019)
  
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- Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean, it sounds on brand to me 🤷‍♀️
  
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blazeknave@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s been a decade. Do we have any fucking national security? What the fuck?

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- Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nah. Our stupid ass government only recently started hiring hackers who smoke weed. But even then, there’s too much stupid red tape.
  
  “Both the NSA and the DOD have a ton of talented hackers, yet when it comes to actually performing disruptive cyber operations, for some reason we as a country are just frozen and scared,” Caceres says. “And that needs to change.”
  
  He points to ransomware actors, mostly based in Russia, who extracted more than a billion dollars of extortion fees from victim companies in 2023 while crippling hospitals and government agencies. North Korea–affiliated hackers, meanwhile, stole another $1 billion in cryptocurrency last year, funneling profits into the coffers of the Kim regime. All of that hacking against the West, he argues, has been carried out with relative impunity. “We sit there while they hack us,” Caceres says.
  
  wired.com/…/p4x-north-korea-internet-hacker-ident…
  
  And also
  
  It also doesn’t help that the Republican Party have outright praised Russia, which means they’re already inside.
  
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  - blazeknave@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    All the white hats and intelligence people I know are actual mmmericans that hate the bad guys. I don’t understand, knowing that, how this is the outcome. Cognitive dissonance I suppose
    
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HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
ah yes. the plethora of yourtownname/times,bugle,journal,herald,etc.

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bartolomeo@suppo.fi ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

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psmgx@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They’ve been doing this since 2010, and ramped it up like crazy in 2016. Is this news?

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- Pretzilla@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This has been and still is ongoing big news
  
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ToucheGoodSir@lemy.lol ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Color me surprised. Information warfare is the 6th generation of warfare. The 7th is drones and such :| a new cold war has been going on for longer than most think, what some might call world war 3. Subtly, to the masses.

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Hikermick@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s the Denver Guardian from 2026 all over again

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TheClockStruck13@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
To get the the motivation in people that could fix this… you have to have something called faith in the current system or at least partial faith that the American system is heading towards a brighter future. It’s not though, the entire military industrial complex, big pharma, the way government politicians are bought and paid for… the entire system is systemically corrupted, on all levels, it’s so systemised now that you could teach it in university… a course on the purely corrupt system….

You need to want to defend your country in order to defend it

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