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Anton Gerashchenko 2d

Empty string. (translated)

2092
Danielle Froom 🏳️‍🌈 2d

"But it's just a couple comments by a couple Dems". At least 72 Democrats have voted to strip human rights away from trans people and/or have campaigned on open anti-trans propaganda in the last year.

2226
Olga Nesterova 3d

Truly unsurprisingly disappointed by the recent comments from the commander in chief on his pity that Russia didn’t take Kyiv in 1 day, bc “their generals took a wrong road”. Ukrainian people are the reason Ukraine existed, exists, will exist. Whether you try to take it in a day or 12 years.

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Krzysztof Graj 4d

𝗜𝗿𝗮𝗻’𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗜𝘀𝗿𝗮𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘀 – 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝘀𝗿𝗮𝗲𝗹’𝘀 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗯𝗮𝘁𝗲 Ahead of Israel’s 27 October election, hundreds of social-media accounts have been presenting themselves as ordinary Israelis while injecting political messages into genuine domestic conversations. They appear as women, reservists, secular voters, religious activists and frustrated citizens. Some attack Benjamin Netanyahu, others have previously promoted narratives associated with the Israeli right, while many focus less on parties than on a broader message: Israel is divided, its institutions cannot be trusted and its political system is approaching crisis. A detailed investigation by the OSINT company Golden Owl has mapped this activity as a substantial Iran-linked influence network. Its October analysis identified at least 694 accounts, with 445 attributed at high or medium-high confidence to the operation. Between 11 August and 11 October, the network generated at least 4.7 million views and more than 160,000 interactions. The researchers found no evidence that these accounts were simply a group of independent Iranian commentators expressing political opinions. Their assessment rests instead on coordinated behaviour, false identities, account histories, copied content, language patterns and platform metadata linking significant parts of the infrastructure to Iran. 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟯𝟱 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗳𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝘀 The investigation developed in two stages. Golden Owl’s first report, published in September, identified an operational core of 35 accounts: 32 personas presenting themselves as Israelis and three Hebrew-language media-style channels. During the 30-day period measured in that study, active accounts generated 947,322 impressions and more than 9,000 interactions. The October investigation expanded the dataset dramatically. Researchers analysed more than 560,000 data points, including tens of thousands of accounts, relationships between them and more than a quarter of a million posts. The wider network showed repeated patterns of identical texts, synchronised activity and accounts created in batches. The numbers therefore describe not a sudden explosion from 35 to hundreds of accounts, but the gradual exposure of a much larger infrastructure surrounding the original core. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗜𝘀𝗿𝗮𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘀 Some of the strongest evidence comes from the histories of individual personas. One account had spent years posting exclusively in Persian under the handle “mardeankabooti” before reappearing in August 2026 as an apparently Israeli user called “Alon Strauss”, complete with an Israeli flag and Hebrew political messaging. Other personas presented themselves as Israeli professionals, activists or ordinary citizens while X transparency information showed connections through the Iranian version of the Android application or locations inconsistent with their claimed identities. The account “Yaara Shalev” presented itself as an Israeli woman concerned with democracy and peace. Investigators found that photographs used to construct the identity were inconsistent, including borrowed and apparently AI-generated imagery. A small Hebrew-language channel called KigVoice, previously identified in Israeli government reporting as part of an Iranian influence environment, repeatedly published material that later appeared on the much more visible Yaara account. In one sample, 14 of 40 KigVoice posts subsequently resurfaced as captions or opening lines in Yaara’s content. Another persona, “Miriam Kozak”, had built an audience of more than 18,000 followers and had already been exposed as fictitious by Israeli researchers in 2024. Its political messaging changed substantially over time, moving between narratives associated with different sides of Israeli politics. That inconsistency is important: the apparent purpose was not necessarily to build a stable ideological following, but to enter whichever political argument offered the greatest opportunity to intensify division. 𝗔𝗜, 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 The Iran attribution is based on more than political content. Researchers identified accounts using the Iranian version of the X Android application, repeated connections to previously identified Iranian influence assets, copied posts appearing across supposedly independent personas within minutes, and Hebrew containing unusual grammatical errors or Persian and Arabic keyboard artefacts. Generative AI also appears to have become part of the production process. Some accounts inadvertently published fragments resembling chatbot instructions, while other posts displayed patterns consistent with machine-generated Hebrew. AI-generated videos and synthetic profile imagery further reduced the cost of maintaining large numbers of apparently distinct personalities. However, none of these indicators was treated as proof on its own. Golden Owl explicitly excluded accounts where the evidence was insufficient and notes that VPNs, travel and platform location labels can create misleading signals. The attribution rests on multiple independent indicators converging across the network. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘆 The network repeatedly exploited issues that genuinely divide Israeli society: responsibility for the 7 October attacks, the war, the hostages, ultra-Orthodox military exemptions, economic pressure, emigration and confidence in state institutions. It also circulated misleading information about the election itself, including false voting dates, claims that voting had been postponed and posts suggesting online voting mechanisms that do not exist in Israel’s parliamentary election system. The pattern suggests a strategy broader than conventional electoral campaigning. Rather than consistently promoting one political faction, the network appears designed to weaken confidence in the government, military, democratic institutions and the electoral process itself. An influence operation does not need to persuade Israelis to support a particular candidate if it can convince different groups that defeat would prove fraud, betrayal or systemic failure. 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝘀𝗿𝗮𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝘄𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘀 One of the network’s most effective characteristics is that it does not depend solely on its own followers. Fake personas enter comment sections and political discussions involving real Israeli journalists, politicians and ordinary users. Authentic Israelis then repost or interact with the material, sometimes carrying it far beyond the original account. Golden Owl does not classify those genuine users as participants in the operation. In most cases they appear to be unwitting amplifiers. But once a message passes from a fabricated Iranian-operated persona to an authentic Israeli account, its foreign origin becomes much harder for the next person to recognise. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟰𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬-𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗱 A much larger figure has also appeared in recent reporting. In the first two days after the October 2023 Hamas attack, social-media intelligence company Cyabra identified more than 40,000 fake profiles participating in online discussions across major platforms. Their content generated hundreds of thousands of interactions and had a potential reach estimated at 531 million profiles. Those numbers are important historical context, but they should not be merged with the current Golden Owl investigation. There is no public evidence demonstrating that all of those 2023 accounts and the 2026 Iran-linked election network belonged to one continuous command structure. The 531 million figure is also an estimate of potential exposure, not proof that 531 million people saw or believed the content. 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? No confirmed individual operators have been publicly identified. Names such as Yaara Shalev, Miriam Kozak and Alon Strauss are personas, not verified identities of the people controlling the accounts. Golden Owl says its evidence supports an association with the Islamic Republic of Iran and with previously documented Iranian influence infrastructure, but it does not establish which Iranian institution, intelligence service, military organisation or contractor directs the network. That distinction is essential. Public OSINT supports attribution at the Iran-linked operational level. It does not currently justify naming individual Iranian officials as the people commanding this specific campaign. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗳𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼 The Israeli case illustrates a broader change in influence operations. The synthetic asset does not have to be a spectacular deepfake of a politician. It can be an apparently ordinary citizen who comments on politics, argues with neighbours, describes personal experiences and gradually becomes part of an authentic community. That can be more difficult to recognise because the propaganda does not arrive looking foreign. It arrives looking local. And when hundreds of fabricated citizens enter the same national conversation, they can manufacture the impression that political anger, despair or distrust is more spontaneous and more widely shared than it really is. 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 Golden Owl — Exposing the Iranian Regime’s Influence Machinery Against Israeli Society https://web-dev-production-7a35.up.railway.app/resources/research/Exposing-the-Iranian-Regime-Influence-Machinery-Against-Israeli-Society Golden Owl Golden Owl — The Other Face of War: Iranian Regime–Linked Manipulation of Israel’s 2026 Election Debate https://web-dev-production-7a35.up.railway.app/resources/research/Iranian-Regime-Linked-Manipulation-of-Israel-2026-Election-Debate Golden Owl The Jerusalem Post — Iran-linked social-media accounts posing as Israelis to target election https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-909863 The Jerusalem Post Ynet — Fake Israelis, real influence: Iran-linked network infiltrates Israel’s election debate https://www.ynetnews.com/tech-and-digital/article/syp119nqqzg ynetglobal Calcalist — Iranian influence network exposed ahead of Israel’s election https://www.calcalist.co.il/calcalistech/article/s1q0ifijzl calcalist Vesty / Ynet — Iranian fake-account network and October update https://www.vesty.co.il/main/article/rkwokjssgg vesty Israel Ministry for Diaspora Affairs — Iran’s active Hebrew-language influence campaign https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/israel-and-us-strikes-in-iran-daily-status_2_3_26/en/mashlat_Roaring_Lion_israel-and-us-strikes-in-iran-daily-status_2_3_26.pdf Government of Israel Israel Central Elections Committee — official 2026 election timetable https://www.gov.il/en/pages/time--table-26 Government of Israel Channel NewsAsia — historical Cyabra analysis of more than 40,000 fake profiles after 7 October 2023 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/how-fake-news-israel-hamas-stokes-outrage-hatred-and-potential-violence-southeast-asian-tiktok-5603221 𝗞𝗲𝘆𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 #DISINFORMED #Episode20 #Iran #Israel #IsraelElection2026 #IranianInfluence #IranianDisinformation #ElectionInterference #ForeignInterference #FIMI #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #FakeAccounts #FakePersonas #SyntheticIdentity #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AIPropaganda #SocialMediaManipulation #Astroturfing #NarrativeManipulation #PoliticalDisinformation #ElectionDisinformation #X #Twitter #Bots #BotNetwork #KigVoice #YaaraShalev #MiriamKozak #DigitalInfluence #InformationManipulation #ElectionIntegrity #GoldenOwl #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD

web-dev-production-7a35.up.railway.app
Exposing the Iranian Regime’s Influence Machinery Against Israeli Society
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Roy called for the X account of the Russian embassy in the Netherlands to be scrutinized and for measures to be taken. He claimed that the account was spreading disinformation and propaganda and seemed to be aimed at undermining democracy and sowing division. He also mentioned that the account demanded responses from Dilan Yesilgöz. Roy referred to Yesilgöz's earlier statement that Russia was the enemy and questioned why there had been no intervention. He believed that Yesilgöz should summon the ambassador and issue a warning, and that the ambassador should be sent back to Moscow next time. As an alternative, he suggested closing the account. Roy described the embassy's activities on X as “(hybrid) warfare” and urged others to share his call or tag those involved. He stated that he had raised the issue several times before. #desinformatie #propaganda #democratie (translated)

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Irish Independent 4d

A Cork nurses’ representative criticized the Taoiseach's comments on industrial action, comparing them to the historical phrase let them eat cake. #Cookies #Security #OnlinePrivacy

www.independent.ie
Cork nurses’ rep likens Taoiseach’s remark on industrial action to infamous ‘let them eat cake’ quip
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Krzysztof Graj 5d

AFRICA DAILY REPORT — 15 OCTOBER 2026 Key news of past 24 hours 1. Kenya — Second Ebola case Importance: 10/10 (Critical). Kenya confirmed a second case in a quarantined relative of the first patient; officials reported no evidence of community transmission. Full source URL: https://apnews.com/article/kenya-ebola-congo-09bbb179f730abecbb2f5b2951e0fc28 2. DR Congo — Ebola disrupts routine healthcare Importance: 10/10 (Critical). Fear of infection and strained services have reduced maternity care and childhood vaccinations in affected areas. Full source URL: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/ebola-spreads-eastern-congo-mothers-children-shun-vital-care-2026-10-14/ 3. South Africa — Four killed after memorial service Four people were killed and three injured in a shooting after a politician's memorial near Johannesburg. Police have not confirmed a political motive. Full source URL: https://apnews.com/article/mass-shooting-south-africa-killed-johannesburg-4692242f3482ffaa673d7712078c591a 4. Mauritius — Curfew lifted after unrest Mauritius lifted an overnight curfew after protests and unrest following a police shooting. Authorities are investigating the incident. Full source URL: https://apnews.com/article/mauritius-protests-unrest-police-shooting-violence-092308d66d3ecb8a30df7297f1527f93 5. Somalia — El Nino threatens food security Importance: 9/10 (Very high). Aid agencies warned that anticipated flooding and already limited resources could deepen hunger and displacement. Full source URL: https://www.africanews.com/2026/10/14/somalia-faces-growing-hunger-fears-as-el-nino-strengthens/ 6. Mali — Refugee and displacement figures climb Importance: 9/10 (Very high). UNHCR-linked figures showed more than 322,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Mali, alongside substantial internal displacement. Full source URL: https://www.africanews.com/2026/10/14/mali-hosts-more-than-322000-refugees-and-asylum-seekers/ 7. Egypt — New freight railway corridor Importance: 8/10 (High). Egypt is developing an electrified rail and logistics corridor between Red Sea and Mediterranean ports as an alternative freight route. Full source URL: https://www.africanews.com/2026/10/14/egypt-to-build-a-rail-link-as-an-alternative-to-the-blocked-suez-canal/ 8. Senegal — IMF chief comments on debt talks Importance: 9/10 (Very high). The IMF managing director expressed optimism about Senegal reaching a creditor agreement, although no final deal has been announced. Full source URL: https://www.africanews.com/2026/10/14/imf-chief-optimistic-senegal-will-reach-agreement-with-creditors/ 9. Niger–France — Dispute over expelled security agents Niger criticised France's expulsion of two security officials amid allegations reported by French media. The allegations remain contested. Full source URL: https://www.africanews.com/2026/10/14/act-of-ingratitude-niger-condemns-expulsion-of-security-agents-from-france/ 10. South Sudan — UN patrols after deadly fighting Importance: 9/10 (Very high). UN peacekeepers stepped up protection around Rumbek after intercommunal clashes reportedly killed about 70 people; the death toll remains unverified. Full source URL: https://www.africanews.com/2026/10/14/rival-communities-clashes-in-south-sudans-lakes-state-leaves-scores-dead/ #Africa #AfricaNews #AfricaDailyReport #TopNewsOfAfrica #AfricaToday #Mali #MaliRefugees #RefugeeCrisis #ForcedDisplacement #HumanitarianCrisis #UNHCR #Sahel #SahelCrisis #Somalia #ElNino #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #FoodSecurity #FoodInsecurity #FloodRisk #HungerCrisis #HumanitarianAid #Egypt #EgyptEconomy #RailwayInfrastructure #FreightRail #RedSea #Mediterranean #AfricanInfrastructure #AfricanDevelopment

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The Keulpaka Institute wrote that the White House is currently spreading propaganda at a minute's pace, which Russian trolls are applauding in the comments thousands of times. The upcoming midterms, which could become a disaster for Donald Trump, the withdrawal of intelligence information for Ukraine, Trump's betrayal which he described as disgusting, the intensified Russian attacks on civilians, and the advance of a Putin-aligned front in Germany are all connected according to his representation. These are not coincidences but rather a broad front that is putting everything on one card. #Politik #USA #Russland (translated)

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Sarah Murphy 6d

“Reform has to take ever more extreme positions to keep winning headlines. As horrific as Jenrick’s comments are, they should be understood less as a policy proposal than as the political equivalent of a toddler acting out for attention.” Cruelty is weakness. liveapp.inews.co.uk/category/482...

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Daniel Mulhall 6d

The post said Downing Street was trying to play down Burnham’s comments about Russia’s role in Brexit, but the author thought the possibility could be true. They added that they had heard suggestions about it during the Brexit referendum, when there had seemed to be little appetite to investigate. #Brexit #Russia #Politics #GB #RU

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2717
Arthur Snell 7d

Boris Johnson’s claims about asking whether Russia interfered in Brexit are misleading. He didn’t ask for any formal assessment and nor did he receive a categorical response. Anyone printing a notorious liar’s disingenuous comments is engaged in deliberate obfuscation.

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Irish Independent 7d

Limerick Minister criticizes comments regarding his health as disrespectful to people with disabilities. #Cookies #OnlineSecurity #BlockedAccess

www.independent.ie
Limerick Minister says comments on his health were a ‘slap in the face’ to people with disabilities
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Beach Roy wrote that the Russian embassy had disabled the reactions after it had come under heavy fire, according to him. Now that Yandex was on fire, he stated that there would also be no bot to like and retweet messages from the embassy. He argued that the embassy had thus been completely paralyzed and used derogatory terms about those involved. #Rusland #Yandex #socialmedia (translated)

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2726
Krzysztof Graj 1w

Operation Dark Clark – Russia built a real organisation around a false identity Most influence operations create fake people, fake websites or fake news stories. Operation Dark Clark appears to have gone considerably further: Russian operators built what looked like a functioning research organisation in Latin America, employed real people to produce genuine research and concealed from those employees who was ultimately directing their work. OpenAI disclosed the operation on 8 October after banning a cluster of accounts originating in Russia. The actors used ChatGPT while targeting countries across Latin America, principally to damage Ukraine’s reputation, manipulate domestic political debates and manage a self-described research organisation called the Social Research Center, or SRC. OpenAI assessed Dark Clark as Category Five on the six-level Breakout Scale, the first operation it has disrupted since beginning its influence-operation reporting to reach that level. A front organisation with real employees The SRC presented itself as a research platform studying subjects including Latin America’s relationship with India and the Indian diaspora. OpenAI found more than 60 articles on its website, most of them apparently original rather than plagiarised. Internal reports produced by the Russian operators discussed hiring, dismissals, salary scales, staffing and unfinished research projects, strongly suggesting that the operators controlled the organisation rather than merely collaborating with it. At the centre of the structure was “Mia Clark”, a fictitious identity reportedly used to manage social-media activity and communicate with staff. According to OpenAI, the available evidence indicates that employees working for SRC in Latin America were probably unaware that the organisation was being directed by Russian actors. They interviewed experts, conducted research and wrote papers in what appears to have been good faith. The deception therefore existed primarily at the organisational level: much of the work was real, but the identity and strategic purpose of the institution commissioning it were not. OpenAI This is one reason Dark Clark differs from the familiar model of a troll farm. A reader encountering an SRC paper might be looking at research genuinely written by a Latin American employee based on genuine interviews. The manipulation lies further upstream, in who built the institution, selected its direction and controlled its infrastructure. From forged emails to real events The operation also appears to have attempted something more ambitious than online persuasion: inducing real people to produce events that could later be turned into propaganda. In May 2026, according to the operators’ internal reports, they created an email address impersonating Lima’s regional education authorities and instructed schools to organise activities about Ukraine for a cultural-diversity event. The instructions included references to Stepan Bandera, whose historical legacy remains particularly contentious in Poland and parts of Eastern Europe. The operators claimed that some schools complied, replied to the false address and sent photographs of the events. OpenAI could not independently verify every claim contained in the operators’ reports. It did, however, find Peruvian reporting matching the story, followed by publications in Poland and an English-language outlet in Hungary. Some coverage included comments from a Polish MEP calling for people displaying what he described as anti-Polish attitudes to be declared persona non grata. OpenAI therefore concluded that the fabricated starting point appears to have entered genuine political debate across national borders. The mechanism is unusually effective because the final photographs need not themselves be fabricated. If people can be tricked into staging a real event on the basis of a forged instruction, the operation creates authentic visual evidence of something that was artificially initiated. The same method in Ecuador and Bolivia Dark Clark’s internal reports describe similar efforts elsewhere. In Ecuador, the operators claimed they used a fake education email to encourage schools to stage ceremonies involving President Daniel Noboa and Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. Ecuadorian media subsequently covered a matching controversy, and the country’s education minister issued a detailed denial. Other Ecuador-focused material included fabricated audio attributed to Ukraine’s consul and a false television report alleging that Noboa’s government was recruiting Ecuadorians to fight in Ukraine. Local fact-checker Lupa found that the supposed Teleamazonas report had never been broadcast, that images had been taken from Instagram, that the audio was AI-generated and that a company named in a supposed recruitment contract did not exist in Ecuador’s corporate registry. In Bolivia, an internal report described a fake audio recording supposedly made by an employee of state water company EPSAS during anti-government protests. It claimed that water supplies to La Paz would be cut and a state of emergency declared. The allegation produced a fact-check and an official denial. OpenAI says the operators explicitly described their objective as worsening the political crisis surrounding the demonstrations. Possible links to the post-Wagner influence machine Dark Clark did not emerge in a vacuum. The operators repeatedly asked ChatGPT about Politology and La Compania, names associated in previous investigations with the Russian influence apparatus that developed from structures once connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Forbidden Stories and its partners obtained 1,431 pages of internal documents describing a network known as “The Company”, which they reported had grown to almost 100 operatives and was conducting influence projects across roughly 30 Global South countries. Their investigation found that the organisation moved under the supervision of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, after Prigozhin’s death. Its documented budget for ten months of activity in 2024 was approximately €7.3 million. Two older Argentina campaigns claimed in Dark Clark’s internal reports — a false story about Javier Milei buying Cartier collars for his dogs and the staging of anti-Milei graffiti — had already been independently attributed by investigative journalists to Politology/La Compania. That is significant corroboration, but it is not enough to prove that every Dark Clark activity was run by the same organisational structure. AI was the back office, not the mastermind Perhaps the most important finding concerns artificial intelligence itself. In most documented cases, the Russians were not using ChatGPT to generate the propaganda seen by the public. Their principal use was administrative: drafting reports for an unknown superior, summarising operations, translating material and recording the supposed success of campaigns. Those reports also expose a weakness in the operators’ own measurement. OpenAI found instances in which they tried to claim credit for developments they had probably not caused, suggesting that they were not only attempting to manipulate Latin American audiences but also presenting an inflated picture of their effectiveness to whoever was supervising them. Dark Clark nevertheless broke further into the real world than any influence operation OpenAI had previously disrupted. Under the Brookings framework, Category Five means that an operation has escaped its original network and been amplified by high-profile individuals such as politicians. Dark Clark crossed that threshold because fabricated narratives appear to have provoked governmental denials, mainstream reporting and political comment in several countries. Its most important innovation was therefore not a particularly convincing deepfake. It was the construction of a partly genuine institution around a concealed foreign controller. The research could be real. The employees could be real. The interviews could be real. What was false was who they were ultimately working for. Sources OpenAI — Disrupting AI-enabled “false front” operations https://openai.com/index/disrupting-ai-enabled-false-front-operations/ Forbidden Stories — Propaganda Machine: Russia’s foreign influence strategy across three continents https://forbiddenstories.org/propaganda-machine-secret-documents-reveal-russias-foreign-influence-strategy-across-three-continents/ Forbidden Stories — Ghost Journalists, Cash and Kremlin Scripts: Argentina https://forbiddenstories.org/ghost-journalists-cash-and-kremlin-scripts-how-russian-operatives-tried-to-influence-argentinian-media/ openDemocracy — Russian influence operation in Bolivia https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/russia-bolivia-south-america-putin-evo-morales-wagner-prigozhin-covert-operations-propaganda-disinformation-foreign-interference/ Lupa Media — Fake Teleamazonas report about recruiting Ecuadorians for Ukraine https://lupa.com.ec/verificaciones/noboa-mercenarios-ucrania-ecuador/ Brookings Institution — The Breakout Scale https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-breakout-scale-measuring-the-impact-of-influence-operations/ Keywords: #DISINFORMED #Episode17 #OperationDarkClark #DarkClark #Russia #LatinAmerica #RussianInfluence #RussianDisinformation #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #FalseFront #FrontOrganisation #FakeInstitution #SocialResearchCenter #SRC #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #OpenAI #NarrativeManipulation #SourceLaundering #InstitutionalManipulation #ForgedDocuments #FakeAudio #PoliticalInfluence #CovertInfluence #Peru #Ecuador #Bolivia #Argentina #Ukraine #Politology #LaCompania #TheCompany #SVR #WagnerLegacy #PropagandaMachine #GlobalSouth #BreakoutScale #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD

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Alex Rins 1w

The author said they had received serious comments, including references to death and violence. They acknowledged why people were upset by their reaction, but said threats and abuse were never acceptable. They added that people could make mistakes and that they took responsibility for their own.

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BBC 2w

New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the rape allegations, but the lawyer says comments she made on the case should disqualify her. #CornellUniversity #SexualAssault #JusticeSystem

www.bbc.co.uk
Lawyer for one of Cornell 7 calls for special prosecutor to be removed over previous comments
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Jurgen Vluijmans 2w

Jurgen Vluijmans wrote that he had read comments on articles about entrepreneurship and corporations. The familiar arguments stood out to him less than what he described as the strongly negative sentiment towards entrepreneurs in Belgium among people who do not run their own businesses. He stated that this was an observation, not a value judgment, and that the attitude shocked him because it was, in his opinion, much worse than he had expected. #ondernemen #Belgium #sentiment (translated)

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3329
Gavin Newsom 2w

I said his comments were 'deranged and dangerous' and 'disgusting and disqualifying'. #TrumpComments #IranConflict #CaliforniaPolitics

White House defends Trump comment to let Iran 'take out' LA and San Diego
www.bbc.co.uk
2067
BBC 2w

New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the rape allegations, but the lawyer says comments she made on the case should disqualify her. #CornellUniversity #SexualViolence #SpecialProsecutor

www.bbc.co.uk
Defence lawyer in Cornell University case calls for special prosecutor to be removed
1837
Johan Van Overtveldt 2w

The author wrote in a paper that 772 billion in debt accumulation was attributed to Wallonia and 27 billion to Brussels, while Flanders had a surplus of 346.5 billion. The author asked whether that was the "excess of Flemish policy" for which Dermine (PS) warned. #België #schuld #beleid #BE (translated)

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