Bots working for the Kremlin published 120 thousand posts overnight with fake quotes from Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson, Alain Delon and other celebrities
Bots associated with the Russian authorities from the Double network, the largest of the Kremlin’s disinformation networks working for Western audiences, began a massive campaign to distribute pictures with fake quotes from celebrities. The posts they published on Friday evening and Saturday night have already received several hundred thousand views. In the pictures, the stars are credited with calls to stop helping Ukraine and words about a “collapsing” Europe.
Since Friday evening, bots have published 50 pictures with fake quotes on the X network (formerly Twitter), after which other “Double” accounts have retweeted them more than 120 thousand times, a representative of the “Bot Blocker” project told the Agency. These posts collected more than 500 thousand views, according to project statistics. To publish fake quotes, 62% of bots were used, which are usually engaged in distributing pictures and videos as part of the “Double”.
▪️This is the standard intensity of a campaign with fake quotes. Over the past six months, Bot Blocker has detected six such campaigns.
▪️Bots published pictures with quotes in English, French, German and Polish. Fake statements were attributed to famous people, including actors Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Alain Delon, director Luc Besson, singer Elton John, and football player Lionel Messi.
▪️A significant part of the fake quotes contain calls to refuse support for Ukraine. “We are impoverished, it’s time to forget about Ukraine,” says “Jennifer Aniston.” “Ukraine no longer exists. All our money was thrown away,” Lionel Messi echoes.
▪️ “All countries have begun to think about themselves, and the EU is falling apart,” says a quote attributed to Scarlett Johansson. “Europe is impoverished. Politicians are getting crazier. The officials in the European Parliament are corrupt,” says the fake Angelina Jolie. And the fake Elton John in his statement combines the themes of Ukraine and the EU: “We fell into the Ukrainian trap. Now the EU is collapsing."
The new campaign began almost immediately after the European Parliament elections, in which parties supported by the Kremlin achieved success in France and Germany.
▪️All previous campaigns with fake quotes were also aimed at stopping aid to Ukraine.
