The US company Microsoft claims to have uncovered a Russian disinformation campaign against the US presidential candidate: A Russian group is spreading “hair-raising fake conspiracy theories”.
Microsoft says it has uncovered a Russian disinformation campaign against US presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The US software company referred to a video circulating online in which the vice president is falsely accused of injuring a 13-year-old girl in a car accident in 2011 and then of driving away. This video was created by a Russian group called Storm-1516. It is said to be a so-called troll factory for online manipulation that is close to the Kremlin.
The revelation of the incident is further evidence that Russia is stepping up its efforts to exert political influence in the run-up to the US presidential and congressional elections in November. The Russian embassy in Washington did not initially respond to a request for comment.
Actors appear as whistleblowers
After President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, “Russian influence operations” initially struggled to pivot their anti-Democratic campaigns, Microsoft said in a blog post on Tuesday. However, in late August, Storm-1516 began producing content linking Harris and her vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, to “outrageous fake conspiracy theories” in an attempt to discredit them.
Storm-1516 is known, experts say, for producing misleading videos in which actors pose as whistleblowers or journalists spreading scandalous misinformation. In the case of the alleged hit-and-run video, Microsoft has found that the group paid an actor to pose as the man who was falsely said to have been paralyzed since the accident.
Fake website set up
In addition, a fake website was set up for a non-existent news channel called “KBSF-TV”. The fabricated story was spread via this site and also circulated on social media, such as X.com. In total, the video was viewed an estimated 2.7 million times.
The US Department of Justice recently filed a lawsuit against two employees of the Russian state broadcaster RT on charges of money laundering in connection with alleged attempts to influence the elections in seven weeks. The social media group Meta, in turn, decided to ban RT and other Russian state media worldwide from its online networks Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads. The US company justified the ban with “foreign interference activities” using fake news. (Reuters)
