Russia is directing its anger towards the Olympics and this year's hosts, Paris, after its athletes were banned from competing under their flag at the Summer Olympics.
Russia propaganda A report released Sunday by Microsoft said Olympic participants had produced an hour-long documentary, created fake news reports and even issued fake warnings impersonating French and U.S. intelligence agencies urging people to avoid the Olympics.The report states: Disinformation campaigns The campaign was created by a group the company calls “Storm1679.” The campaign appears to have accelerated since March, with social media being flooded with short videos warning of possible terrorist attacks and stirring fears for safety. While the campaign is aimed at the Olympics, it employs a range of techniques to spread disinformation that could also be used in European and US elections.
The effort began in earnest last summer when the company released a fake documentary about the International Olympic Committee that stole Netflix's logo and used an artificial intelligence-powered voice to impersonate the Olympic committee. Tom CruiseThe committee succeeded in removing from YouTube a video titled “The Fall of Olympus,” a parody of the 2013 film “The Fall of Olympus.” But in March, the committee said attacks continued with relentless attempts to discredit its leadership, citing a campaign using false recordings of phone calls purportedly made by African Union officials on behalf of Russia.
Storm1679 now appears to be producing short videos that are easy to create. Once focused on denigrating Ukrainian refugees in Western countries, it shifted its focus to the Olympics after French President Macron began publicly considering sending French troops to Ukraine. Microsoft estimates that Storm1679 produces three to eight fake videos a week in English and French, many of which impersonate the BBC, Al Jazeera and other broadcasters. The group appears to be quick to respond to news such as protests in New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific. Other groups focus on Ukraine's future prospects. Terrorist attacks In Paris.
Most of the videos claiming to be from the CIA or French intelligence are relatively simple. They are nothing like those actually produced by the CIA, but they use the agency's logo and black text on a white background, so they may look authentic to unsuspecting online readers. “They are trying to incite expectations of violence,” Microsoft's Clint Watts said of the group Storm1679. “They are trying to make people afraid to go to the Olympics.” One of the group's strategies, according to French authorities and Microsoft, seems to be to attract the attention of fact-checkers. “Content doesn't normally travel from one platform to another, but when their fake content is fact-checked by an account with a large following, it gets a lot more views and gets in front of new and different audiences,” Watts said.
