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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/thesayke on 2023-11-05 07:21:02.
How Russian disinformation toppled government after government in Africa
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/21/percepto-africa-france-russia-disinformation/
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Israeli businessmen Royi Burstien and Lior Chorev touched down in the busy capital of the West African nation of Burkina Faso, they had an urgent message for the country’s embattled ruler.
They were skilled in deceptive tricks of social media, reeling people into an online world comprised of fake journalists, news outlets and everyday citizens whose posts were intended to bolster support for Kaboré’s government and undercut its critics.
Facebook fan pages even hailed the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary network run by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the late one-time Putin ally whose Internet Research Agency launched a disinformation campaign in the United States to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Information for this story was gathered over two years of interviews with key participants, along with a review of extensive documentary material, including client contracts and screenshots, that supported Percepto’s account.
An awkward moment happened in 2022, when the Stanford Internet Observatory and the research firm Graphika reported on a network of hundreds of fake social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook run by the U.S. military.
“If we’re going to not accept what Russia is doing, we need to articulate what we’re not going to do.” said Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab, a unit of the Atlantic Council think tank that studies disinformation.
The original article contains 2,369 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!