On 3 April, The Quint's WebQoof received a mail from a user who requested us to check several Telegram links related to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

While we normally receive requests to verify claims that are viral on the internet, this was a bit different.

These mails continued, more Telegram groups were flagged, more 'information' was asked to be verified.

As of 22 July of this year, we had received around 317 claims which peddled misinformation against different countries such as Ukraine, France, Germany, United States and drove pro-Russian narratives.

These claims included fabricated news reports, and narratives that targeted a few countries.

However, we found that only 246 claims were fact-checkable and rest of them (71) were shared as satire or something that could not be verified.

We have received over 100 more such requests since then, which followed the similar pattern.

Historically, art has been used as a tool to express, oppose, or to start a movement against the political status quo. So, when we started receiving claims of graffiti being made in different parts of the world that indulged in political comments, we thought it was a callback to the renaissance era. However, there was one difference. Unlike the aforementioned period, these graffiti were not real.

Further, we passed this image through an AI detection tool named ‘TrueMedia’ which showed substantial evidence of this image being fake.

Both of these factors combinedly indicated the claim being false.

Did you notice a common link?

Impersonating Credible News Publishers

Among the 317 pieces of content we received for verification Telegram comprised 90% of the total claims received

We explored the messages we received for ‘verification’ from each of these channels, and found overarching themes. The most common themes, which also overlapped each other in several instances, revolved around targeting countries which are a part of the NATO and international sporting events.

These claims, which ranged from slightly misleading to completely fictitious, attempted to build several narratives.

This operation did not target a specific country, but sent these queries to fact-checkers everywhere.

The European Fact-Checking Standards Network’s communications manager Samantha Lee told us that their partner organisations started getting these emails at the end of 2023, and still received them after the campaign was exposed.

Guillaume Kuster, the co-founder of CheckFirst, a Finnish software and methodologies company sent us their collaborative research on the same operation, which they named “Operation Overload.”

The operation dated back to “at least to August 2023,” and mirrored a similar operation on X (formerly Twitter), which was a Russian-led disinformation campaign called “Matryoshka”. Their research identified 100 X accounts that had shared or amplified this disinformation since October 2023.

“The analysed accounts exhibit clear markers of coordinated inauthentic behaviour,” it stated, mentioning that they showed specific behavioural patterns and calling them “a tactic likely designed to minimise detection by the platform.”

Both organisations found that platforms had not succeeded in restricting the spread, or even identifying this pattern.

On X, however, CORRECTIV saw “limited action” to remove accounts that were a part of this campaign. Bernahard opined that X “clearly isn’t doing enough since the campaign, and similar campaigns, have only expanded in scope.”

Check First’s report, which was created in collaboration with 20+ fact-checking organisations, mentioned that Germany’s CORRECTIV had engaged with one of them.

They received a response to their feedback on the claims made, which initially expressed “respect and trust” in CORRECTIV’s work, but made the goal of the campaign clear when they asked — “Is it possible for your work to be seen by as many people as possible?”

Myth Detector Georgia had initially “engaged and responded to” the senders by telling them that they would work on the disseminated posts to verify whether it was true. “I don’t recall them replying after our response,” a member of their team wrote.

Goal Was to ‘Overwhelm Fact-Checkers, Amplify Disinformation’

Bernhard, Lee, and Myth Detector Georgia shared the opinion that the goal might be to ‘waste time’ or ‘to tie up the resources’ of fact-checking organisations.

“Because of fact-checkers’ crucial work against disinformation, they are often targeted by rogue actors, such as those you are referring to, who do not like to be called on their lies.” - Lee

Kuster, however, said that CheckFirst was not “directly impacted” as they do not publish fact-checks. “However, we’ve listed (until June 4th) over 200 debunks or fact-checks published by media outlets.”

Kuster’s statement went along with our findings. For many of these purported “claims,” we struggled to find more posts sharing disinformation on social media platforms. Debunking that piece of disinformation would inevitably grab more attention than not publishing a fact-check about the false claim would.

How does it impact the average social media user? It might, or it might not. Berhnard believes that it is difficult to assess the impact of such campaigns. “The campaign may also give the impression to users on these platforms that there is higher support for pro-Russian narratives than there actually is.”

He stressed on the need for people to be aware, and know that “malicious actors  try to spread false content by for example impersonating established media such as the BBC. 

X and Telegram are not a source for reliable information - readers should seek out trusted media outlets and get their information directly at the source.”

Bernhard recommended conducting “a simple Google search” whenever one comes across these claims, to look for coverage by other media outlets or fact-checks by newsrooms.

Credits

Reporters
Aishwarya Varma
Abhishek Anand

Senior Editor
Abhilash Mallick

Creative Director
Naman Shah

Cover Graphic
Kamran Akhter

Production Assistant
Anoushka Jain

Additional Graphics
Midjourney, directed by Naman Shah