The fight for the freedom of Ukraine is also being waged on the Internet. Russian hackers, in particular, use the Internet to spread the word about war with their propaganda. The perfidious thing about it is that networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube even make money from spreading Russian propaganda because of their economy.
Drastic increase
The development of cyber attacks and the volume of spam in the past few days shows how big the problem is. Maik Morgenstern, CEO of the Cyber Security Institute AV-Test.org told BILD: “One day before the Russians invaded Ukraine, we registered a massive increase in spam mails. Two days earlier there was a significant increase in cyber attacks. Instead of a few tens of thousands of attempts, we registered hundreds of thousands for a short time.”
Morgenstern assumes that these attacks should distract from the actual attacks and tie up analysis forces.
The graphic shows the occurrence of spam messages in the sensor systems (honeypots) of the security expert AV-Test. Suddenly, there was a drastic increase in unsolicited messages surrounding Russia’s attack on Ukraine
The Federal Office for Information Security also warns of a wave of attacks. The national IT Crisis Response Center was activated and critical infrastructure operators were warned of attacks. In a press release the BSI speaks of an “increased threat situation”, but not yet of an acute danger.
Social media is also being flooded with conspicuously simple-minded pro-Putin propaganda. Thomas Kaspar, editor-in-chief of the Frankfurter Rundschau reports something on Twitter:
Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, but also YouTube, Twitch and Reddit are reporting a significant increase in comments coming from users who comment surprisingly one-sidedly, do not have a large number of followers themselves and were only created recently. These are all signs that these profiles were created for propaganda purposes – or even run by bot networks.
These fake and bot profiles spread false information, which in turn means that users are no longer sure which reports are based on facts and which are not. The sheer amount of false information that is spread via social networks led Prof. Joan Donovan to recommend that users should only obtain information from classic media.
The director of the Shorenstein Center for Media and Politics at Harvard University points out that old pictures and videos are used to support misinformation. Her advice to everyone who uses social media: “Be skeptical!”
money for attention
But the biggest problem: Social media have a financial interest in spreading misinformation as well. Studies in the US election campaign have shown that the more extreme the positions shown, the more attention people pay. And the longer and more intensively users deal with content, the more money Twitter, Facebook & Co. earn by being able to display advertising.
When asked about the problem, a spokeswoman for Facebook’s parent company Meta told BILD: “We are taking extensive steps to curb the spread of misinformation about our services in the region and are still consulting with external experts. We remove content that violates our policies and work with third-party fact-checkers in the region to debunk false claims.”
Hide, just don’t delete
That sounds good at first. But what it actually means is that the material stays online until the examination (and that often takes a surprisingly long time). And even after the check, it will not be deleted. The meta spokeswoman explains to BILD what happens after a label: “If this content is classified as incorrect, we reduce its distribution by displaying it further down in the news feed so that fewer people see it.”
During the attack on Ukraine, only the usual measures against false information and propaganda were used on YouTube. And here, too, only content that clearly violates the platform’s guidelines or directly violates German law is deleted. So allowed in the comment columns BILD videos users continue to spread false information – without YouTube actively reacting to it.
sham measures
Both Twitter and Facebook seem to be aware of the dilemma. But neither seem willing to forego income. At least the consequences that both companies have announced cannot be explained otherwise. According to security boss Nathaniel Gleicher, Meta no longer wants to display advertising from Russia and Twitter will no longer show any advertising in Russia and Ukraine until further notice.
Both measures sound good at first glance – but they don’t change the fact that both companies benefit massively from Putin’s propaganda.