<
https://www.ms.now/news/russia-election-influencing-campaign-targeting-democrats>
"A Russian disinformation campaign is targeting the midterms, and specifically
Democrats, in what seems to be the first attempt by the Kremlin-backed
operation to meddle in this year’s elections.
The campaign is simple, and designed to reach voters on social media. In a
series of doctored selfie videos posted to various platforms, Hollywood actors
appear to disavow the Democratic Party and urge viewers to vote Republican.
“When I hear about Democrats, I immediately think of corrupt Nazi whores,” a
bogus Sarah Jessica Parker says. “If you love America, never vote for
Democrats.”
The videos are real — one clip featuring Julia Roberts is lifted from Gucci’s
2023 Chime for Change campaign for gender equality, and others were ripped from
personalized videos the actors recorded for fans on Cameo. But the audio is
fake, seemingly cloned from the actors’ voices with artificial intelligence and
laid over a reel of right-wing bogeymen: Pride parades, Jeffrey Epstein, stock
footage of drug deals and homeless encampments.
In one of the manufactured videos posted to X, Bluesky and TikTok, Roberts is
made to say that Democrats and Big Pharma are conspiring to push a sinister
trans agenda. In another, Emma Caulfield appears to call Democrats vampires who
drink the blood of children. A manipulated clip of Christopher Lloyd of “Back
to the Future” has him railing against Black Lives Matter, and a voice-cloned
Ed Begley Jr. calls Democrats “perverts.”
The videos are all branded with unauthorized CNN logos in the top left corner
and push viewers to share the clips and join the #AllDemocratsAreCriminals
campaign. The campaign hasn’t gone viral; the most popular posts garner just
dozens of interactions and were first flagged by @antibot4navalny, an anonymous
group of analysts tracking Russia-related influence operations.
The campaign is familiar to disinformation researchers and bears all the marks
of a longtime Kremlin-backed operation. Referred to interchangeably as
Matryoshka, Operation Overload and Storm-1679, the campaign is known for
seeding social media with manipulated videos that bear the branding of real
news outlets and law enforcement agencies to spread false narratives and erode
public trust across Europe and the United States. It uses bot networks and has
been known to send the clips directly to fact-checkers and newsrooms — a
debunking from the media can amplify the messages."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
