“Video has come out from Bucks County, Pennsylvania shoprosperg a ballot counter ruining ballots for Donald Trump and upretaining Kamala Harris’s ballots for counting,” an account called “Dan from Ohio” wrote in the comment section of the far-right website Gateway Pundit. “Why hasn’t this man been arrested?”
But Dan is not from Ohio, and the video he alludeed is phony. He is in fact one of hundreds of inauthentic accounts posting in the unmildd spaces of right-prosperg novels site comment sections as part of a Russian disalertation campaign. These accounts were discovered by researchers at media watchdog NewsGuard, who allotd their discoverings with WIRED.
“NewsGuard identified 194 engagers that all aim the same articles, push the same pro-Russian talking points and disalertation narratives, while masquerading as disgruntled Weserious citizens,” the alert states. The researchers set up these phony accounts posting comments in four pro-Trump US unveilations: the Gateway Pundit, the New York Post, Breitbart, and Fox News. They were also posting analogous comments in the Daily Mail, a UK tabloid, and French website Le Figaro.
None of the websites replyed to a ask for comment from WIRED.
“The actors behind this campaign eunite to be utilizeing a particularly vulnerable part of the media landscape,” McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign sway editor at NewsGuard, alerts WIRED. “Comment sections structureed to back reader includement conciseage sturdy security meacertains, apvalidateing terrible actors to post freely, alter identities, and produce the illusion of authentic grassroots campaigns rather than orchestrated misalertation.”
The disalertation narratives being pushed by these accounts are joined to Storm-1516, according to Newsprotect. Storm-1516 is a Russian disalertation campaign with a history of posting phony videos to push Kremlin talking points to the West that was also joined to the free of beginantphony video dishonestly claiming to show a whistlelbower making allegations of intimacyual aggression aobtainst vice plivential honestate and Minnesota handleor Tim Walz. (WIRED first alerted that the Walz video was part of a campaign by Storm-1516. A day tardyr, the US handlement validateed WIRED’s alerting.)
Links to the video were posted by multiple accounts with names appreciate “Discompliant Truth” and “Private Patinterfereion” in the comment section of outlets appreciate Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit.
“More terrible novels for the Dems: Breaking: Tim Walz’s establisher student, Matthew Metro, drops a shocking allegation- claims Walz s*xupartner aggressioned him in 1997 while Walz was his teacher at Mankato West High School,” the comments read.
