US media is reporting that Facebook took down a network of fake accounts operated by Belarus’s domestic intelligence service KGB used to pose as journalists and activists to stoke tensions about the crisis at the border between Belarus and Poland. According to a CNN report:
December 1, 2021 Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, says it has evidence the Belarusian KGB used fake accounts to pose as journalists and activists to stoke tensions about the crisis at the border between Belarus and Poland. “These fictitious personas posted criticism of Poland in English, Polish, and Kurdish, including pictures and videos about Polish border guards allegedly violating migrants’ rights,” Meta said in an announcement Wednesday. To make the fake personas convincing, some of the accounts likely used profile pictures of fake faces generated using artificial intelligence, so-called “deepfake” technology, Meta said. In total, Meta said it had identified and removed 41 Facebook accounts, four Instagram accounts, and five Facebook groups linked to the Belarusian KGB.
Read the rest here.
According to Meta’s Adversarial Threat Report, Facebook removed 41 accounts, five Groups, and four Instagram accounts in Belarus that primarily targeted audiences in the Middle East and Europe.
The Belarus-Poland border crisis is a migrant crisis consisting of an illegal influx of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern and African immigrants to Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland via Belarus that Polish authorities have described as a low-intensity hybrid warfare campaign conducted by Belarus against the European Union.
Last month we reported that Belarus was allegedly behind a hacking and disinformation campaign targeting Eastern European NATO members since 2016.
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