The Russian embassy in Washington did not initially respond to a request for comment. After Joe Biden decided not to run again, Russian influence operations initially had a hard time changing their actions against the Democratic campMicrosoft wrote in a blog post. However, at the end of August, Storm-1516 began to Producing content linking Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, to “outrageous fake conspiracy theories” in an attempt to discredit them.
According to experts, Storm-1516 is known for producing misleading videos in which actors pose as whistleblowers or journalists and spread scandalous misinformation. Also in the case of the video about the alleged hit-and-run According to Microsoft’s findings, the group paid an actor to appear as the actor, who was falsely said to have been paralyzed since the accident. In addition, a Fake website for a non-existent news channel called “KBSF-TV” has been set upThe fabricated story was spread through this site and also circulated on social media, such as X.com. In total, the video was viewed an estimated 2.7 million times.
The US Department of Justice recently filed a lawsuit against two employees of the Russian state broadcaster RT on charges of money laundering in connection with alleged attempts to influence the election in seven weeks. The social media group Meta, on the other hand, decided yesterday, Ban RT and other Russian state media worldwide from its online networks Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and ThreadsThe US company justified the ban with “foreign interference activities” through fake news.