Watching the explosive virality of the clips offers a powerful lesson in asymmetric media operations. They deploy cultural sophistication, an understanding of online communities and the enormously powerful creation tools made available by American tech companies, tools that give everyone on the internet access to a personal reality distortion field — drones, but for your feed.

On Wednesday, as Donald Trump was trying desperately to talk down the oil markets with hints of a deal, a stream of videos, carefully calibrated for U.S., regional and third country audiences rolled out on X via embassy accounts, Russia Today, and disaffected Maga influencers. The clips, by broad social media consensus, are good. Some lean heavily on the extremely online grammar of the U.S. right. Some remix Hollywood characters and likenesses in exactly the way that OpenAI’s now nixed billion-dollar deal with Disney was supposed to sanction. Others lean more heavily into Islamic iconography, featuring Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as worshippers of Baal, the foreign demon god who figures in both the Quran and the Hebrew Bible. The Lego movie is an especially rich resource, but so are TikTok formats, and the kind of idealized AI figures beloved of Trump administration meme makers. You can watch a few of them here.

Notably, faked war footage is far from the dominant format. All of these clips foreground and celebrate their own artificiality: some are sentimental, some triumphal, many are full of the gleeful adolescent wit of gamers on discord forums. 

Researchers have long been warning that generative tools will undercut the authority of visual evidence, compounding and accelerating the damage created by slower, cruder forms of fakery: photoshop, selective editing, even gaming clips passed off as combat footage. Of course, we are already there, and have been for a while. Russia has been the paramount master of this game, in Ukraine and in its ongoing influence operations around the world. But others have learned quickly. Last year, when India and Pakistan were engaged in a brief aerial battle, social media bullshit overwhelmed and compromised traditional coverage. More recently, Israel’s obliteration of Gaza was accompanied by a sustained and comprehensive blizzard of visually compelling misinformation, propaganda, and official lies. 

That continues. On March 28, Israel killed three journalists in a targeted strike in Southern Lebanon, claiming without evidence that one of them, Ali Shoaib, was a member of Hezbollah’s Radwan forces. They later distributed a photograph of him in military fatigues to reinforce the point, but explained to Fox news that in fact, they’d had to photoshop the uniform in because no such picture existed.

Meanwhile, in the Trump administration’s domestic war on immigrants and political opponents, we’ve seen a complete resetting of norms around the tone of official communication and any expectation that it is rooted in fact. Nowhere was that more evident than in the altered footage posted by the White House of the arrest of the prominent Minneapolis activist Nekima Levy Armstrong in January. In the video, shared by the official White House handle, a handcuffed Levy Armstrong is sobbing, her skin visibly darkened. In fact, she had faced arrest calmly. 

Questioned by reporters about this blatant falsification, deputy White House communications director Kaelan Dorr responded: "Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue.” Collapsing the distinction between a meme and the factual record with the aid of AI is the final step in this administration's insistence that its preferred narrative simply is reality.

The problem for the White House and its allies is that their choices in tech policy, official communication, and press freedom level the playing field for information war in ways that Tehran’s media strategists understand and they, for all their immersion in online worlds, do not.

Iranian propagandists know that the currency of visual information online has already been completely debased. They’ve dealt with it plenty, and no doubt practiced it themselves in regional battles for narrative dominance. Their insight is that as cheap and easy as it is to create and distribute fakes, returns on the effort of mobilizing what disinformation researchers call “coordinated inauthentic action” are diminishing. They still do it, but it isn’t where the action is.

Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have, in a very practical sense, wrought this moment in concert with Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, JD Vance and Donald Trump. At their urging, the U.S. has surrendered unrivaled dominance in scarce, expensive information and cultural assets in exchange for a political economy of media that widely distributes cheap, abundant ones.

Tech leaders and conservative politicians have worked consistently for a decade to deprecate the trustworthiness of American journalism and constrain its liberties. They have smeared its practitioners as “enemies of the people”; they have captured the commanding heights of the broadcast and culture industries through crony deals, and they have launched an assault on both press freedom and standards, two assets that once made American news outlets the envy of the world. Needless to say, the economic collapse of traditional media companies fostered by Google’s  and Meta’s advertising duopoly only served to deepen the damage. Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post shuttered its Middle East bureaus just days before the war began.

Meanwhile, lying from agency podiums and the Oval Office, makes Karoline Leavitt barely distinguishable from Baghdad Bob, Iraq’s minister of information in 2003 whose surreal, truth-dodging press conferences during the U.S.-led invasion made him a global laughingstock. And the DOGEing of both the nominally independent Voice of America, as well as the state department’s Global Engagement Center leaves the administration with neither broadcast nor digital counter-propaganda assets. 

When no one can be trusted with the actual truth, we are left with the AI equivalent of 19th-century editorial cartoons, produced at industrial scale and distributed globally. America has little advantage in that war, particularly when it is at a moral, political and legal nadir.

If anything, Iran, which combines repression with an enormously rich literary culture, film scene and advertising market brings serious capabilities to the fight.

Of course, the ebbing of information power was already under way during the first Trump administration, and during Joe Biden’s term in ways that are indissociable from broader democratic decline. The “trust and safety” architecture adopted by big platform companies was designed — implicitly if not always visibly — to conserve information authority, and ensure that it functioned in broadly pro-democratic ways. 

After the disastrous failures of the Rohingya genocide — which rights groups and UN investigators blamed Facebook for facilitating — and the fears surrounding the manipulation of the U.S. electoral environment in 2016, there was a clear threat to the commercial and political health of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Tech companies, governments, researchers and human rights experts devised rules and norms for content moderation grounded in existing standards, tools for detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior, and a framework for crisis response.

The community of practitioners and institutions that sprung up to combat the flesh-eating virus attacking the body politic were working with bandaids in the battlefield hospital even before Covid, a coordinated attack from the right, and the second Trump victory hit them, but they succeeded in imposing some limits. That project now lies in ruins. 

The Stanford Information Laboratory has been shut down. Trust and Safety teams at Meta and X have been disbanded. The national security arm of the project, centered around the State Department is gone, and private funding for countering misinformation has largely dried up.

Where are the hyperscalers, the AI titans, whose tools are being so effectively deployed, in all of this?

The trust and safety people who do work at OpenAI are dutifully putting out reports every few months. They are detailing how they foiled efforts to use ChatGPT for a Chinese influence campaign aimed at Sanae Takaichi, the Japanese prime minister, and exposing a Russian content mill feeding African newspapers. “Pro-tip for governments,” wrote Head of National Security policy Sasha Baker on LinkedIn of the February report. “Please don’t use our products to spread lies online.”

Governments, in the world of Sam Altman’s “democratic AI” do not include that of the United States. OpenAI has not mentioned a single U.S. ally — let alone the administration itself — in these reports. 

OpenAI has hired multiple ex-Clinton, Obama and Biden officials, and in their work a weird, attenuated piece of the old national security approach to information integrity lives on, alongside the project of selling products to the Pentagon. The company’s leaders clearly treat these issues  as a complement to messaging around Western AI, or a picayune adjunct to the bigger questions of AI risk, which are handled way up in the organizational stratosphere, as they are at Anthropic.

Perhaps the larger lesson is that you can’t really shut down Sora, or put AI-generated video back in its box. If you choose to prosecute an illegal war of choice after surrendering the hard-won high ground of a robust, democratic information environment, high tech weaponry will not offset the deficit. On the contrary, you will have compounded the risk of both tactical failure and strategic geopolitical defeat. When that happens, and in some ways it already has, those who made this war, and their enablers in Silicon Valley, will have only themselves to blame.

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Thirteen years ago, a group of American do-gooders tried to do something about this. 

The NGO Invisible Children published a 30-minute YouTube video with high hopes. With their film ‘Kony 2012’, they sought to stop the Lord’s Resistance Army, which had kidnapped, killed and brought misery to families across several Central African nations since the late 1980s. The video opens with our blue orb home spinning in outer space as the director reminds us of our place in time. “Right now, there are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago,” he says. “Humanity's greatest desire is to belong and connect, and now, we see each other. We hear each other. We share what we love. And this connection is changing the way the world works.” In other words,  the technology of connection will solve this problem.

Despite the uber virality of the film,100 million plus views nearly overnight, Kony remains a free man, though much more infamous, and his victims didn’t get all the help they needed. The campaign seemed to embody slacktivism at its most poisonous: the high hope that you can change the world from your sofa.

“Hope,” Gloria Steinem once wrote, “is a very unruly emotion.” Steinem was writing about US politics in the Nixon era but the observation holds. Hope is at the core of how many of us think about the future. Do we have hope? That’s good. It’s bad if we have the opposite – despair, or even cynicism. 

Former CNN international correspondent, Arwa Damon knows this unruly quality of hope firsthand. For years she worked as a journalist in conflict zones. Now she helps kids injured by war through her charity called INARA. She discussed this work last month at ZEG Fest, Coda’s annual storytelling festival in Tbilisi. In war, Damon has seen how combatants toy with hope, holding out the possibility of more aid, less fighting only to undermine these visions of a better tomorrow. This way, she says they snuff out resistance. This way they win. 

In seeing this, and in surviving her own close calls, Damon told the Zeg attendees, she realized she didn’t need hope to motivate her. “Fuck hope,” she said to surprised laughter. 

So what motivates her to keep going? “Moral obligation,” she said. After everything she has seen, she simply cannot live with herself if she doesn’t help.  She doesn’t need to hope for an end to wars to help those injured by them now. In fact, such a hope might make her job harder because she’d have to deal with the despair when this hope gets dashed, as it will again and again. She can’t stop wars, but she can, and does, help the kids on the front lines. 

Most of us haven’t crawled through sewers to reach besieged Syrian cities or sat with children in Iraq recovering from vicious attacks. And most of us don’t spend our days marshalling aid convoys into war zones. But we see those scenes on our phones, in near real time. And many of us feel unsure what to do with that knowledge because most of us would like to do something about these horrors. How do we deal with this complex emotional reality? Especially since, even if we are not in a physical war zone, the information environment is packed with people fighting to control the narratives. In this moment of information overload and gargantuan problems, could clinging onto hope be doing us more harm than good? 

Emotion researchers like Dr. Marc Brackett will tell you that instead of thinking of emotions as good or bad, we can think of them as signals about ourselves and the world around us. And we could also think about them as behaviors in the real world. Dr. Brackett, who founded and runs the Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale, said hope involves problem solving and planning. Think about exercising, which you might do because you hope to improve your body. In those cases hope could prove a useful motivator. “The people who only have hope but not a plan only really have despair,” Dr. Brackett explained “because hope doesn't result in an outcome.”  

Developing a workout plan seems doable. Developing a plan to capture a warlord or stop kids from suffering in wars is a good deal more complex. The 2010s internet gave us slacktivism and Kony 2012, which seems quaint compared to the 2020s internet with its doom scrolling, wars in Ukraine and Gaza and much more misery broadcast in real time. What should we do with this information? With this knowledge? 

Small wonder people tune out, or in our journalism jargon, practice news avoidance. But opting out of news doesn’t even provide a respite. Unless you’ve meticulously pruned your social media ecosystem, the wails of children, the worries about climate change, the looming threats of economic disruption or killer machines, those all can quickly crowd out whatever dopamine you got from that video of puppy taking its first wobbly steps. But paradoxically, the pursuit of feeling good, might actually be part of the problem of hope. 

I took these questions about hope to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, an acclaimed psychologist and neuroscientist. She too talked less about our brains and more about our behaviors. The author of, among other things, How Emotions are Made, Dr. Barrett noted that we might experience hope in the moment as pleasant or energizing and it helps with creating an emotional regulation narrative. Meaning: we can endure difficulty in the present because we believe tomorrow we will feel better, it will get better. However, Barrett said hope alone as a motivator “might not be as resistant to the slings and arrows of life.” If you assume things will get better, and then they don’t, how do you keep going? 

“I think people misunderstand what's happening under the hood when you're feeling miserable,” she added. “Lots of times feel unpleasant not because they're wrong but because they're hard.”

I told Dr. Barrett about Damon’s belief that she keeps going because of moral obligation and she again looked at the emotional through the behavioral. “There is one way to think about moral responsibility as something different than hope,” she said, “but if hope is a discipline and you're doing something to make the parts of the world different you could call it the discipline of hope.” This could be a more durable motivation, she suggested, than one merely chasing a pleasant sensation that tomorrow will be better.  “My point is that, if your motivation is to feel good, whatever it is you are doing, your motivation will wane.”

After ‘Kony 2012’ shot to astonishing success, in terms of views, the creators raised tens of millions of dollars but achieved little on the ground – an early lesson in the limits of clicktivism. Once upon a time American do-gooders hoped they’d help Ugandan children simply by making a warlord infamous, now the viralness of  Kony 2012 feels like a window into a cringey past, a graveyard of hopes dashed. But maybe we just grew up. Maybe our present time and this information environment full of noise and warring parties asks more of us. Maybe hope has a place but among a whole emotional palate of motivations instead of a central pillar keeping us moving forward. Because let’s be honest: we may never get there.  Hope, as the experts told me, doesn’t work without a plan. And, raising hopes, especially grand ones like changing global events from your smartphone, only to have them dashed can actually prompt people to disengage, to despair maybe, or even to embrace cynicism so they don’t have to go through the difficult discipline of hope and potential disappointment.  

One day, during the start of the pandemic, when my home doubled as my office, I got a piece of professional advice I’ve held tight. A therapist who works with ER doctors shared with a group of us journalists that when we work on tasks that seem never ending, burnout is more likely. To prevent it, he advised that we right-size the problem. Put down the work from time to time, celebrate our achievements (especially in tough times), develop rituals and build out perspective to nourish us as we keep doing the work.

The pandemic ended but we bear the scars and warily look out at a horizon full of looming troubles, most of them way outside the control of any one of us. Both Dr. Marc Brackett and Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett reminded me: emotions are complex and humans aren’t motivated by just one thing. But no matter what mountain we want to climb we would all do well to adopt this conception of hope as a discipline rather than just a feeling. Because in this environment, there’s always someone on the other side betting we’ll give up in despair.

A version of this story was published in last week’s Sunday Read newsletter. Sign up here.

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On August 21, officers from India’s Intelligence Bureau visited the campus as part of what was meant to be a routine procedure to renew Ashoka’s license to receive foreign funds. But the questions that the officers asked instead concerned an academic paper that had cast the country’s ruling party in a negative light. They also questioned the “intent” of the professor who had written the paper.

Even before the visit by officials, the professor had resigned from Ashoka. It is just the latest example of India’s shrinking space for research and criticism. 

Nandini Sundar, a writer and professor of sociology at the University of Delhi, told me that the Modi administration has censured and put pressure on academics it believes threaten its Hindu nationalist agenda. “Academic freedom in India is under attack,” she said, “and has been ever since 2014,” when Modi became prime minister. The Academic Freedom Index 2023, which assessed academic freedom in 179 countries, placed India in the bottom 30%. The report included India among 22 countries in which standards of academic freedom had fallen. 

The Index also traced the beginning of the decline in India’s academic freedom to 2009, when the now-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party were not in power. But the report noted that “around 2013, all aspects of academic freedom began to decline strongly, reinforced with Narendra Modi’s election as prime minister in 2014.” It concluded that “India demonstrates the pernicious relationship between populist governments, autocratization, and constraints on academic freedom.”

Bolstered by India’s recent feats in space research – becoming on August 23 the first country to successfully land a craft in the southern polar region of the moon – Modi likes to describe his government as being devoted to science and innovation. But it has little time for the humanities, or the social sciences, or any research that does not fit its definition of “progress.” Apoorvanand, a professor at the University of Delhi and prolific commentator on political and cultural affairs, told me that the “real challenge is self-censorship by academics due to legitimate fears of reprisal by university administrations and physical violence by right-wing groups.” 

He said academics rarely have the freedom to design their own curriculum, and research scholars are told to avoid certain subjects. “There has been an unprecedented ideological bias in new hirings,” he told me, meaning that the BJP has been eager to place friendly academics on faculties and in positions of power in universities across the country. Students at Indian universities have been some of the Modi administration’s most dogged and committed opponents, with even the United Nations noting the Indian government’s propensity for using violence and detention to intimidate student protestors.

On July 25, the paper in question, written by Sabyasachi Das, then an economics professor at Ashoka, was posted on the Social Science Research Network website which publishes “preprints,” that is, papers which await peer review and journal publication. Das had reportedly presented his findings at a talk in the United States. Titled “Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy,” the paper claimed to document “irregular patterns in 2019 general election in India,” comprehensively won by the Modi-led BJP, and to “present evidence that is consistent with electoral manipulation in closely contested constituencies.”

According to Das, the “manipulation appears to take the form of targeted electoral discrimination against India’s largest minority group – Muslims, partly facilitated by weak monitoring by election observers.”

Once news of the still unpublished, yet-to-be reviewed paper emerged on social media, it caused a political furor. M.R Sharan, an Indian economics professor at the University of Maryland, explained on X (formerly known as Twitter) that although Das’ “astonishing” new paper showed that the BJP had perhaps gained a dozen seats through electoral manipulation, this was a negligible number in an election in which the BJP won 303 seats, 31 seats more than the number required to win an outright majority in parliament.

But the impact on the results of the election or lack thereof was beyond the point, argued prominent opposition figures such as Shashi Tharoor, once a candidate for the post of secretary- general at the U.N. Das’ conclusion, Tharoor said, “offers a hugely troubling analysis for all lovers of Indian democracy.” The “discrepancy in vote tallies,” he wrote on X, needed to be accounted for by the government or India’s Election Commission “since it can’t be wished away.”

The BJP responded to Das’ paper with fury. On X, Nishikant Dubey, a BJP member of parliament, demanded to know how Ashoka University could permit a professor, “in the name of half-baked research,” to “discredit India’s vibrant poll process?” 

Das also became a target of online trolling by Hindu nationalists and BJP supporters. Ashoka tried to distance itself from Das, claiming it had no responsibility for “social media activity or public activism by Ashoka faculty, students or staff in their individual capacity.” By the middle of August, Das had handed in his resignation. It was quickly accepted by the university administration.

On August 16, student journalists at the university’s newspaper reported that a public meeting was held in which “students, alumni and faculty expressed their escalating dismay regarding academic freedom at Ashoka.” 

In an open letter to administrators posted on X, the economics department wrote that the governing body’s interference was “likely to precipitate an exodus of faculty.” The letter also warned that if Das wasn’t given his job back and the administration continued to interfere with research, the faculty “will find themselves unable to carry forward their teaching obligations in the spirit of critical inquiry and the fearless pursuit of truth that characterize our classrooms.”

But only a couple of days later, the fledgling protest fizzled out. The promised exodus or strike never happened. Only one professor resigned. Instead, the administration told students that the economics department had “reaffirmed its commitment to holding classes, a sentiment echoed by almost all other departments.”

The episode with Das isn’t the first time that the university has been embroiled in matters of academic freedom. The tacit acceptance of Das’ departure suggests that Ashoka, set up as a U.S.-style liberal university with private donors, continues to have  little stomach for confrontation with the government. 

In 2021, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a professor and former Ashoka vice chancellor, resigned from the university. Mehta, a public intellectual steadfast in his opposition to Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics, was told that his presence at Ashoka was turning into a “political liability.”  His “public writing in support of a politics that tries to honor constitutional values of freedom and equal respect for all citizens, [was] perceived to carry risks for the university,” he said. 

As far back as 2016, just two years after Ashoka University was founded, the Indian magazine Caravan revealed that the administration might have forced the resignation of staff members who had signed a petition protesting state violence in the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir. 

Few academics at Ashoka are now willing to speak to journalists about Das or the issues of academic freedom that have surfaced since  the BJP’s angry response to his paper. Economist Jayati Ghosh, another prominent critic of the Modi government, wrote on X that she was “truly shocked at the lack of solidarity displayed by senior faculty” at Ashoka. “They have so little to lose from defending basic academic freedom,” she added. “Silence enables injustice, and it spreads.”

A professor at Ashoka who asked to remain anonymous told me that there were “plenty of caveats in Das’ paper and it had yet to go through rigorous peer review but the outsized reaction shows that the paper hit home.” Another liberal intellectual, who also asked to speak anonymously, told me that the paper questions the “most fundamental aspect of India’s claim to being a democracy – free and fair elections.” By continuing to send a message that academic insubordination will not be tolerated, they added, “the BJP is warning universities to control areas of research.” 

Mehta, who resigned from Ashoka in 2021, was also a former president of the Center for Policy Research, a well-respected Delhi think tank. In July, The Hindu reported that the center’s tax-exempt status and license to raise foreign funds had been revoked. Nearly 75% of its funds were raised abroad. In the absence of an official reason for the decision, the media has speculated that what might have led to the crackdown were the frequently combative articles that CPR staffers publish about Modi administration policies and the independent research that the center undertakes, which  has often contradicted the official government line. 

The BJP appears determined to stamp out criticism of Modi. In January, when the BBC broadcast a documentary in the U.K. examining Modi’s actions as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 when 1,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed in riots in the state, the Indian government banned it from being screened in India. When students tried to organize public screenings in defiance of the ban, they were allegedly detained by the police and suspended by their universities. 

Academic freedom and the need to ask questions, it appears, is less important to Indian universities than appeasing the government of the day.

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The post In India, academic freedom is at stake in a row over research appeared first on Coda Story.

The videos were fake, said the Tamil Nadu police. A controversy had been manufactured, said the Tamil Nadu government, by politicians from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party. “The spread of fake videos,” said the state’s chief minister, M.K. Stalin, on March 10, “was initiated by BJP leaders from North India.” He accused these unnamed leaders of having an “ulterior motive,” of trying to create unrest just after he had “spoken about anti-BJP parties uniting.”

With the BJP, led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, firm favorites to win a third consecutive national election in 2024, most analysts deem the formation of an ad hoc alliance of regional parties and the fast-fading Congress — which has governed India for the vast majority of its 75 years as an independent nation — as the opposition’s only hope.

If Modi remains by far India’s most popular politician, there is little love lost for him in Tamil Nadu. For years, whenever he visited the state, he would be greeted with signs that read, “Go back Modi.” But the BJP, which has never had an electoral presence at any level in Tamil Nadu, surprised observers last year by winning several seats in municipal elections in the state. It led the party’s state chief to declare his intent to turn the BJP into a third political force in a state that has been dominated by two parties since the 1960s, both of which emerged from an equal rights movement for oppressed castes. Despite the progress made last year, the BJP is currently in disarray in Tamil Nadu, with 13 party workers quitting dramatically just last week.

Meanwhile, Bihar is currently led by an anti-BJP coalition. In August 2022, the state’s chief minister walked out on an alliance with the BJP and formed a new government with other partners including the Congress. The fake videos of Bihari laborers being attacked in Tamil Nadu were spread by BJP supporters, politicians from both states said, to drive a wedge between parties in both states that were opposed to the BJP.

Sylendra Babu, the extravagantly mustached head of the Tamil Nadu police, told me that he had to form 46 special teams to coordinate with the Bihar police to combat the viral spread of videos and social media commentary about attacks on Bihari laborers. “It was a war-like situation,” Babu said. 

Arrayed against the police in both Tamil Nadu and Bihar were right-wing influencers with followings of up to 60 million people, local BJP politicians and even some media. The Hindi-language Dainik Bhaskar newspaper — the largest circulated daily in India and by some estimates the fourth largest in the world — reported that more than 15 Bihari laborers had been murdered in Tamil Nadu. The article was based on a single phone call with a laborer and the accompanying video showing clips of unrelated violence.

Following up on the report, a BJP spokesperson tweeted that Bihari laborers were being attacked and killed for speaking Hindi in Tamil Nadu. To counter the misinformation, the Tamil Nadu police took to Twitter to threaten legal action against anyone it found to be deliberately making false posts. Babu himself posted a video on Twitter describing the claims that Bihari workers were being attacked in Tamil Nadu as “false and mischievous.” 

Bihar, linguistically and culturally, is part of India’s so-called “cow belt” — including the Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in particular. Back in the 1980s, an Indian academic coined the pejorative acronym BIMARU to refer to these states, a pun on the Hindi word “bimar,” meaning ill or sick. These states lag behind the rest of the country, particularly the south, in terms of prosperity and education.

Tamil Nadu is a southern state. Like its neighbors, it outperforms the North when it comes to providing healthcare, education and jobs to its residents. But the Hindi-speaking northern states dominate national politics, a dominance that has become even more stark since the Modi-led BJP came to power in 2014, gobbling up votes in the region at an unprecedented scale.

States like Tamil Nadu and Kerala have always been fiercely vigilant that their languages be recognized as integral to the Indian union. Many in the South prefer to communicate in English as their pan-Indian link language rather than Hindi. But Modi, critics point out, has not disguised his ambition to make Hindi the country’s national language. The Indian constitution recognizes 22 languages, while giving Hindi and English “official” language status. English, therefore, is equal to Hindi as a language of government communication. 

By trying to further privilege Hindi, Modi and his closest political ally, Home Minister Amit Shah, have been accused of inflaming tensions with the south. Stalin, the Tamil Nadu chief minister, has himself written to Modi to demand that the latter stop his “continuous efforts to promote Hindi in the name of one nation.” Stalin described attempts to “impose” Hindi as “divisive in character” and warned against provoking another “language war.” Tamil Nadu has a long history of resisting the adoption of Hindi as the language of government.

While Hindi is by far the single most spoken language in India, there are hundreds of millions who do not speak it and who fear being at a disadvantage were learning Hindi to become compulsory. The rumors and fake videos tapped into the prejudices and resentments of both Hindi speakers and those in the south who speak entirely different languages and write with a different alphabet. The videos made national headlines because they appeared to expose yet another historical division still resonant in contemporary India.

S. Anandhi, a professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, told me that the politics of the BJP is inherently opposed to the federalism that has long characterized politics in Tamil Nadu. The BJP, she said, “is against autonomy, democratization of language, and plurality of culture and religion.” 

The fomenting of social media outrage over the last couple of weeks provides an insight into what campaigning might look like over the next year as the general election approaches. The journalist Arun Sinha, author of “Battle for Bihar,” an inside look at the state’s politics, told me that the level of organization shown over the last few weeks, as fake videos were spread about anti-migrant violence in Tamil Nadu, suggests that the BJP wants to establish itself as the voice of the large population of disenfranchised Bihari migrant workers.

Spreading rumors about anti-migrant feelings in states like Tamil Nadu and maligning the non-BJP coalition government of Bihar as unresponsive, he said, “is like killing two birds with one stone.” And, as ever, the BJP’s tight control of the social media narrative in India helps it to advance its electoral goals. The question is whether the opposition can, as it tried to do in Tamil Nadu, effectively marshal social media to stop the spread of disinformation.

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Maya Amerson is one of these people. Amerson began working as a content moderator for Reddit in 2018, reviewing violent and disturbing content and identifying posts that violated the company’s terms of use. After three years on the job, she began suffering from panic attacks and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. She repeatedly sought support from her employer but didn’t get it. Now, she is taking Reddit to court.

Currently pending before the San Francisco Superior Court, Amerson’s lawsuit alleges that the Reddit management ignored her requests to move to a different position with less exposure to this kind of material, even after she returned from a 10-week medical leave following her PTSD diagnosis. The lawsuit also claims that Amerson’s supervisors belittled her after she came back to the office. This led to her resignation in September 2022. She filed the suit three months later. When we asked Reddit for its side of the story, we were told that we could attribute the following to a company spokesperson: “At Reddit, our employees' well-being is a top priority and we offer a robust set of resources for content moderators.”

The allegations in Amerson’s lawsuit are specific to Reddit, a social media giant valued at $6.6 billion that has garnered praise for its unique and decentralized approach to content moderation. But they tell a story that goes well beyond Reddit. A growing number of legal actions are taking aim at tech platforms over their treatment of content moderators and the psychological hazards of the work. These cases highlight the tension inherent in a job that cannot yet be automated and is routinely exported to low-wage contractors overseas.

They also raise an essential and unresolved set of questions: Is vicarious trauma inevitable in the work of content moderation? Or can the tech giants who hire scores of moderators around the world do more to meet the psychological needs of the workforce? If so, are any of the major platforms doing it right?

A brief history of the “front page of the internet”

Founded in 2005 as the aspirational “front page of the internet,” Reddit allows people to create discussion groups, known as subreddits, on topics that interest them. Each of the over 100,000 subreddits across the platform has its own ethos and culture. And each subreddit has its own set of rules that are enforced in addition to the company’s own content policy.

What makes all this work? At the heart of Reddit lies an army of thousands of volunteers who carry out the grueling work of content moderation. Known on the platform as mods, these volunteers oversee each subreddit, removing content and banning accounts that violate their established community rules and norms. Some of the platform’s largest subreddits, like r/politics, have more than 1,000 volunteer mods. The company also employs a paid staff of moderators, like Amerson, to ensure that the content posted on the site does not run afoul of the law or of the company’s own content policy.

Across Reddit, it is these volunteer mods who conduct most of the content moderation on the site. According to Reddit’s most recent transparency report, volunteer moderators were behind 59% of all content removals in 2021, while paid content moderators handled most other removals. 

Reddit characterizes its moderation approach as “akin to a democracy, wherein everyone has the ability to vote and self-organize, follow a set of common rules, and ultimately share some responsibility for how the platform works” and maintains that its bottom-up system “continues to be the most scalable solution we’ve seen to the challenges of moderating content online.” 

In doing this work, however, volunteer mods are providing essential quality control services for Reddit without getting paid a dime. A 2022 study from Northwestern University attempted to quantify the labor value of Reddit’s estimated 21,500 volunteer moderators and concluded that it is worth at least $3.4 million to the company annually. 

While the volunteer moderators do their work for free, many are unaware of the monetary value of the labor they perform for the company. “We wanted to introduce some transparency into this transaction to show that volunteer moderators are doing a very valuable and complex job for Reddit,” said Hanlin Li, the co-author of the report.

Volunteer moderators often describe their work as a “labor of love,” Li explained, but they also have been forthcoming about the need for more institutional support to combat hate speech and harassment. “Over the years we’ve seen a lot of protests by moderators against Reddit, essentially because they thought that they were not supported adequately to do this volunteer job,” she explained. 

This has been a longstanding tension at Reddit, which developed a reputation early on for taking a laissez-faire approach to content moderation and hosting subreddits rife with bigotry and hate speech. This came to a head with a misogynistic incel community that formed on the platform in 2013 and became the ground zero for the 2014 Gamergate online harassment campaign that targeted women in the video game industry. The following year, when Reddit’s former CEO Ellen Pao announced that the platform would ban five subreddits for harassment, she was inundated with online abuse. Shortly after, she resigned. The incel subreddit‌ wasn’t banned by the website until 2017.

Despite its unique reliance on a volunteer-driven content moderation model, the site has flown under the radar of researchers and reporters, generating less attention than other social networks. But the lawsuit could change this.

Lawsuits target tech giants over moderator trauma, mistreatment

Maya Amerson’s case against Reddit is a reminder that the company, despite its unique approach to moderation, is not immune to the same kinds of allegations of worker harm that have formed the basis of lawsuits against the world’s largest tech platforms. 

That includes TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. TikTok was sued by two former content moderators last spring: They alleged that the company failed to create a safe and supportive working environment as they reviewed disturbing material including videos of bestiality, necrophilia and violence against children. Facebook agreed to a $52-million settlement in 2020 to compensate former content moderators who claimed their work caused psychological harm. And YouTube recently settled a $4.3-million lawsuit filed by former moderators who said they developed mental health issues while on the job. 

These suits all focus on a relatively new labor force and speak to an industry-wide concern about the toll of moderators’ work. “Generally speaking, content moderation is kind of the new frontier,” Nicholas De Blouw, one of Amerson’s attorneys, told me. “In 1992, there wasn’t such a thing as content moderation. I think that’s the interesting aspect of these cases, is seeing how the law protects people that are in roles that never really existed.”

Many social media platforms have shifted away from employing moderators in-house and now outsource their jobs to third-party contractors. Vendors like Accenture, CPL and Majorel employ people all over the world, from India to Latvia to the Philippines, typically expecting fast turnaround times on content review but offering relatively low hourly wages in return. In lawsuits, employees allege they’ve been exploited, made to work in substandard conditions and denied adequate mental health support for the psychological effects of their work. 

After TIME magazine showed how moderators in Kenya — working for Sama, a subcontractor of Meta — were paid as little as $2.20 per hour to review violent material while operating in a “workplace culture characterized by trauma,” one worker took both Sama and Meta to court. Sama has since canceled its remaining contracts with Meta. A separate investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism highlighted the plight of a “legion of traumatized” and underpaid Colombian moderators working under grueling conditions for a TikTok contractor. “You have to just work like a computer,” a moderator said of the job in Colombia. “Don’t say anything, don’t go to bed, don’t go to the restroom, don’t make a coffee, nothing.” 

Some social media researchers have suggested that eliminating the outsourced labor model could be a step toward improving conditions for workers. New York University professor Paul M. Barrett, who authored a 2020 report on outsourced content moderation, has called on companies to stop farming out the work and instead employ moderators in-house, where they would theoretically have more access to mental health support, supervision and proper training. 

But moving the job in-house alone won’t resolve all the alleged issues with this line of work, as Amerson’s lawsuit against Reddit makes clear. After all, she was not an outsourced moderator — she was a direct employee of the company. As Barrett explained, directly employing moderators does not guarantee that they will receive everything that employees in these roles need.

“There’s an irreducible aspect to this work that makes it hazardous,” he said. “If you’re doing this work, there’s a danger you’re going to run into very difficult, offensive, and unsettling content. You can’t really completely avoid that. The question is: How well-trained are you, how well-supervised are you, and are there options for you to get the kind of mental and emotional support that would seem to be common sense in connection with this kind of work?” 

Are any companies doing this well? Barrett said he was “unaware of a major platform doing content moderation well in terms of directly employing moderators who receive proper training, supervision and mental health support.”

What would incentivize platforms to implement these changes? While they could reform themselves, put an end to outsourced moderation and provide in-house employees with better benefits, compensation, oversight and training, there’s no reason to expect this to happen. Under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter has moved in the opposite direction, gutting content moderation teams. Layoffs at YouTube have left the company with just one employee overseeing global misinformation policy.

In an area that shows no appetite for self-regulation, actual oversight may be the only solution. Barrett has proposed enhancing the consumer protection authority of the Federal Trade Commission to regulate the social media industry. Such an expansion could give the FTC the authority to ask companies outright about their content moderation practices and to verify whether they live up to their commitments to consumers outlined in their terms of service and community standards guidelines, Barrett explained.

“They make promises just like other companies,” he said. “My argument is that the FTC could ask: So how many moderators do you employ? Do you have enough people to get this done? How do they interact with the automated system? And is all of that adequate, really, to fulfill the promises you make?”

A policy shift like this also would require Congressional action, which is hard to imagine in our gridlocked era of governance. But without major changes to the industry, it’s also hard to imagine lawsuits like Amerson’s — and the concerns that undergird them — going away anytime soon.

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The broad-based, lucrative online campaign targeting Harry and Meghan with conspiracy theories and mass trolling is “by far the worst, worse than anything I’ve experienced doing this,” Bouzy told me.

According to a Bot Sentinel report released earlier this year, online campaigns targeting the royal couple have become a cottage industry for a handful of online influencers. Bouzy calls them “single purpose hate accounts.” Their platforms are devoted solely to posting about the couple and, according to the report, have become “a lucrative hate-for-profit enterprise” where “racism and YouTube ad revenue are the primary motivators.” 

The report describes the conspiracy theories they promote as “reminiscent of QAnon.” 

One popular theory holds that Meghan was never pregnant, her pregnancy bump faked. The followers of this theory call themselves “Meghan Truthers.” The most extreme proponents of the conspiracy maintain that her children Archie and Lilibet aren’t real at all. 

One of the most prominent anti-Meghan and Harry accounts promoting the “moonbump” theory was run by Sadie Quinlan, a Welsh pensioner who heavily promoted the false narrative that Meghan was never pregnant. Her account, called Yankee Wally, accumulated almost 19 million views and earned around $44,000 a year, according to Bot Sentinel’s findings. YouTube banned the account in March, citing violations of its policy against content designed to harass, bully or threaten. 

“I truly believe that Meghan Markle was NEVER pregnant. I believe she is barren,” Quinlan told Buzzfeed in March. “As a British taxpayer I am not happy paying for a FRAUDULENT pair of children.” 

According to Bot Sentinel, Quinlan inadvertently revealed she had been buying up fake Twitter accounts in bulk to promote her cause. She also posted videos on YouTube showing viewers how to make negative reviews about Meghan’s book rise to the top of Amazon’s book review list. 

Bouzy’s research identified Yankee Wally as one of at least 25 accounts devoted to posting round-the-clock anti-Meghan content on YouTube, with almost 500 million combined views and an estimated $3.5 million in YouTube earnings. 

A YouTube spokesperson responded to a Coda inquiry, but offered no comment for publication.

Bot Sentinel identified a core group of “predominantly Caucasian women” who have been able to successfully run a coordinated fake news campaign that gained massive influence, using YouTube to monetize their work and using Twitter to manipulate conversations on that platform, too.

In recent weeks, Bouzy has seen heightened levels of inauthentic activity designed to target the couple. In the comments section beneath the Netflix trailer on YouTube, thousands of almost identical sarcastic comments have been posted.

“I love the part where they say they are drawing a line under Megxit after an interview with Oprah, a podcast, a Netflix series and a book. Brings a tear to my left eye,” wrote one commenter. “I love the part where Harry talks about bravely escaping his castle and servants. This obvious discrimination is triggering a tear from my left eye,” wrote another. 

The structure, repeated thousands of times, begins with “I love the part” and ends with “it brings a tear to my left eye.” Many of the accounts are devoted solely to commenting on the trailer, with little or no other activity. 

This is a “copypasta” spamming technique where “accounts take a string of text and repeat it over and over again,” Bouzy said. And then organically, real people begin following suit. The resulting comments are a mixture of fake accounts and real people copying an inauthentic campaign. 

Attacks on Meghan and Harry have intensified since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, while people have been continuing to post videos explaining how to amplify negative content about the couple by using VPNs and swarming websites associated with Meghan. “It's quite astonishing,” said Bouzy. 

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The post Meghan never stood a chance against the internet appeared first on Coda Story.

As early as 9 a.m. on May 17, Bashir had already seen up to four corpses pulled out of the wreckage of a building that once stood in the Sabon Gari area of Nigeria’s populous northern Kano state. He’d seen crying children in bloodied uniforms spilling onto the streets. He’d seen body parts scattered around those same streets and agonized families searching for their loved ones.

The businessman, who asked me only to use his first name, had been on his way to work when a blast thundered through the dense neighborhood. He rushed towards the sound, recorded the carnage on his phone and posted the footage on Twitter.

Eyewitnesses told him how minutes before, a suspected suicide bomber, who, failing to get past a primary school gate, detonated the explosives in a structure opposite the school. “Bomb blast in Kano,” Bashir tweeted.

He was unprepared for the ferocious response from his compatriots. Bashir had found himself on the wrong side of an information war that highlights the Nigerian government’s sometimes desperate attempts to muddy narratives around the country’s worsening insecurity. And he is still reeling from the impact.

While the government can be frustratingly opaque and unpredictable in its responses to crises, Bashir did not realize that there was an entire online community of trolls, many of whom were based outside Nigeria, who made it their business to spread the government’s version of events, even if it meant denying the lived experiences of other Nigerians.

Government authorities arriving at the scene that day immediately denied there was any attack at all, let alone a suicide bombing. Kano police chief Sama’ika Dikko told reporters that “it was a gas explosion,” and redundantly scolded those who were spreading “false lies” about a bomb.

That was when the social media army that supports the government decided to attack Bashir. “Agent of darkness,” one wrote, accusing Bashir of escalating tensions in a country on edge from alarming increases in violent incidents in recent months.

“I swear it was a bomb,” Bashir tweeted again, trying to impress on the doubters that he was a witness, that he had seen for himself the barely-there bodies that looked as if they had been turned inside-out, that he had seen for himself the massive damage at the epicentre of the blast. 

It didn’t work. As major media houses ran with the government line about a gas explosion, Bashir was tagged across Nigerian Twitter as a liar.

Then, days later, after the news agenda had moved on, Nigeria’s police released forensic “findings” — a jumble of words that neither confirmed nor debunked the bombing but that carried a line Bashir seized on as validation of what he knew to be true.

Materials “suspected to be used for making Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs),” were found at the site, the statement read, and “some arrests have been made.”

“I received so many abusive messages,” Bashir told me, still pained by his experience. “I jotted down the handles of all the people who accused me, but when I wrote to them all after the police report, no one replied.”

It hurt him that, in an ethnically and religiously fractured Nigeria, many people on social media seemed to discount the news specifically because it had affected one of Kano’s minority Christian areas, where tribes from the country’s south live — Sabon Gari loosely translates to “stranger’s quarters” in Bashir’s Hausa tongue.

“It felt like this is the truth of what is happening but officials were trying to change it,” Bashir said. “And seeing people twisting the narrative really demoralized all of us in the neighborhood.”

The Kano incident is only one of many in response to which Nigerian officials have chosen to stick their heads in the sand. They are aided in their efforts by partisan social media debate in which attitudes and ideological positions are far more important than facts or witness accounts.   

But this is not a new tactic nor is it unique to this administration, argues Cheta Nwanze, the lead researcher at SB Morgen, an intelligence firm in Lagos that has been tracking such violence. 

“Nigerians love to look at things going wrong and pretend that it’s not happening, so this has been a systematic thing,” Nwanze points out, referring to what some scholars describe as a culture of impunity in the country. 

There is little accountability, few consequences and seemingly no appetite to discuss a fraught history. And attacks such as the May 17 bombing that are perceived to be targeting southern Igbos in Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north could lead to chaos — they are too reminiscent of the beginnings of the 1967 civil war.

Many of Nigeria’s contemporary convulsions stem from that war in which the majority Igbo and Christian south attempted to create their own separate state of Biafra. They were pummelled with bombs, isolated, and starved. By the end of all the fighting, in 1970, two million people had died.

Little time if any is spent on the civil war in Nigerian schools, nor has a process of reparation and reconciliation been instituted. In fact, since the war, Igbos have been politically marginalized in a country where it is the third largest tribe and constitutes over 15% of the population. 

Yet there is no meaningful national dialogue on these issues. Instead, silence permeates. And many other groups and tribes claim to have been wronged in similar fashion, with only simmering anger and resentment in place of justice.

“What we do is hope that if we sweep it under the rug it will go away and that has been entrenched in the way our governments operate” Nwanze continues. “What has happened now is that the bottom of the rug is full.” Denial as a mode of official communication is a form of disinformation. It is designed to mislead.

A June 2022 study on fake news by the Abuja-based Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) notes that Nigerian authorities often knowingly employ rebuttal tactics on social and traditional media platforms, or in some cases, stoic silence, as a way to save face.

In the Kano case in particular, experts believe the aim was to reduce panic, although it inadvertently caused confusion. 

In an eerily similar case to the one in Kano, officials denied a suicide attack in Lagos at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency in 2014, refusing to admit that the terrorists, whose home base is up in the country’s northeastern fringes, had infiltrated Nigeria’s commercial nerve center.

Boko Haram has been seeking to create a caliphate in Nigeria since 2010 and has been behind many suicide bombings and kidnappings. But the Lagos explosion was blamed on gas canisters too — a fairly common cause of accidents in the country.

But the worst case of government denial — or more accurately, disinformation — would come in October 2020. Nigerian youths protesting the brutality of a notorious, bribe-collecting police unit popularly called SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad), were gunned down by security forces in Lagos.

Authorities denied then — and still deny — the killings, despite video evidence from eyewitnesses who streamed the shootings on Instagram.

The incident spurred a worldwide social media campaign, with millions using “#ENDSARS” in solidarity with Nigeria’s youth, shaming President Muhamadu Buhari and his government. 

“ENDSARS was when the government deployed all their fake news arsenal,” says Idayat Hassan, lead at CDD and co-author of the fake news report. As with Bashir, government trolls discounted witness testimonies online, gaslighting even the wounded who barely survived. “They went all out,” adds Hassan.

The consequences of official lie-peddling online could be far-reaching in a presently divided Nigeria with 122 million internet users, 24 million of whom are active on social media. Already, the discourse, online and offline, brims with tribal and religious sentiment as citizens experience both rising violence and a deteriorating economy under Buhari.

His leadership has failed to emphasize unity in the multi-ethnic nation and has led to calls for secession in several quarters. Fake news, separate from the fake news spread by the state, has flourished, sometimes leading to deaths.

The spreaders of disinformation are often everyday users, online influencers, hired foreign companies or Nigerians in the diaspora. One of the persistent recent conspiracy theories is that  Buhari is in fact an impostor, and that the real president died after he traveled abroad for medical treatment in 2018. The much-better looking man who returned to Aso Villa, the president’s home in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, is actually a Sudanese man named Jubril, or so the theory goes.

As Buhari’s eight-year term ends in 2023, the race to succeed him is in full throttle as are the fake news campaigns. In previous elections, politically-motivated groups and troll farms were  fixtures, churning out propaganda for their favored candidates. Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s supporters were known to have hired the infamous U.K. firm Cambridge Analytica to run their election campaigns.

In the larger west Africa region, disinformation tactics are becoming normalized too. Although internet penetration is at a low 17% in the region, many west Africans online and offline are vulnerable to fake news. News spreads rapidly from platforms like the Meta-owned messaging app Whatsapp to having an effect on real life, notes Hassan, the CDD researcher. Online rumors are often fodder for serious debates on TV news stations.

Sometimes, official gaslighting tactics escalate into repression. Abuja resorted to banning Twitter in 2021 after a tweet by President Buhari was flagged for incitement. Indeed, save for Ghana, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, all 15 West African nations have ordered internet shutdowns in the last decade, according to CDD. 

Nine people were killed and 27 injured in the Sabon Gari blast — the highest civilian fatality count of Nigeria’s 14 IED explosions this year. The last bomb attack in Kano was in 2015, at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency.

But no group has so far claimed responsibility for the bombing in May. The silence adds to the confusion surrounding the incident. Even government officials, who admit in private that there was a bomber don’t know who to blame it on, says Hassan.

Bashir’s neighborhood still bears the scars of May 17. The primary school building is now empty — the school authorities have moved the kids to another location. Opposite it, the building in which the bomb exploded remains a wreck.

The Kano police chief who initially swore there was no bomb could not be reached for comment. There is little indication that authorities will ever state clearly the results of their analysis.

As the February, 2023 general elections roll around, heated ethno-religious political campaigns rely on the spread of disinformation. “No one knows what the truth is anymore,” Hassan says. “And it might only get worse.”

Bashir, so alarmed by the scale of the trolling he faced, would no doubt agree.

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On January 27, government minister Anurag Thakur was addressing one such event in the capital, where he was filmed urging a mob to shoot “the country’s traitors.” A month later, the city was shaken by anti-Muslim riots that claimed at least 53 lives. The majority of victims were working class Muslims. But, when reporters pressed Thakur for comment, he accused them of “lying” — despite widely available video footage to the contrary.

Now, Thakur has the power to take down news reports that run against his ambiguous grasp of the truth. 

Over the weekend, he was made India’s Minister for Information and Broadcasting. The appointment came a month after the nation passed a new and draconian media censorship law that — if implemented in the way many fear it will be — will throttle India’s already embattled press. 

The legislation forms a comprehensive attack on freedom of speech and expression. The first part of the law is directed at platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp; the second at streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime; the third deals with online news organizations. 

The regulations are ostensibly only for digital publishing, but will likely be applicable to all media outlets that have an online presence. India now takes 142nd place out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders — a ranking so low that the Modi government set up a special committee to look into it. This new law is likely to push the country even further down the table.

If, to paraphrase Tolstoy, every censorship-happy regime is censorious in its own way. India’s new media laws offer a telling insight into Modi’s authoritarian interpretation of astroturf populism.

The last time a regime attempted such overt control of the Indian press was during the Emergency of 1975, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi effectively suspended the constitution against a backdrop of rising political unrest and disaffection with her government. Gandhi relied on a more top-down model of censorship, in which government officials visited printing presses and newspaper offices, and excised offending articles from newspapers before they made it to print. The following days papers often carried white spaces where there should have been news articles.

Modi’s laws are tailor-made for the modern age of permanent outrage and his ministers’ preference to let mobs — both online and offline — do their dirty work for them. The heart of the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 lies in a seemingly innocuous “grievance redressal mechanism,” via which anyone offended by any piece of online news can lodge a complaint with the relevant news organization.

The publication must acknowledge the complaint within 24 hours and respond within 15 days. If the complainant isn’t happy with the response, they can escalate the matter to an industry body, and if the response of the industry body still doesn’t satisfy them, they can — within about a month of their first complaint — approach a central government committee, set up by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. This government-administered body can order that the content be taken down, demand that stories be changed, or — to quote from the law — warn, censure, admonish or reprimand the publisher. The ministry can also directly ask the committee to evaluate any story it finds objectionable. 

The government also retains “emergency powers” to direct any publisher to take down content in the interest of protecting the sovereignty of India, the security of the state or the maintenance of public order. In such cases, it can unilaterally ask for content to be taken down.

To understand how this works, I called Siddharth Varadarajan, founder of The Wire, one of the few Indian publications still standing up to Modi’s government. Varadarajan and his colleagues are routinely harassed by state police forces acting at the behest of their political masters, and rank-and-file members of the Hindu nationalist BJP, who file cases against them, on frivolous pretexts, with far-flung police stations.

“In effect, this gives the government the power to take down pretty much anything that isn’t a cooking recipe,” Varadarajan told me. “These rules are basically weaponizing troll armies to flood publications with thousands of complaints that the publication will have to log and answer. And, if the trolls aren’t happy, they can escalate it to the government, which can order that the article be taken down.”

When I was editor-in-chief of HuffPost India, we found that Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah had set up a secretive propaganda company called the Association of Billion Minds to run sophisticated online misinformation campaigns. The BJP also helms a network of thousands of paid and unpaid supporters to influence online conversations and target anyone who criticizes the prime minister or his government. 

In such a scenario, it is all too easy for Modi’s online army to swamp small digital newsrooms with thousands of complaints in a matter of minutes and quickly escalate them to Thakur’s ministry. “And of course this power is completely discretionary,” Varadarajan said. “So, if someone complains against a government-friendly publication, the government can simply look the other way.”

This allows for a curious arm’s-length transaction in which the government outsources censorship duties to the public under the guise of personal empowerment, then censors the press under the guise of “grievance redressal." It also relies on an old trick of populist regimes around the world: creating the belief that citizens and the state are both on the same side, battling the excesses of an out-of-control press, controlled by dangerous and self-interested elites.

Given his track record, Thakur is the perfect man for such a task.  

When the Election Commission of India asked him to explain his hateful sloganeering in Delhi, he said that he was innocent. He only admitted to shouting, “Traitors of the country...” It was, he explained, his supporters who chanted, “Shoot them.”

The post Letter from Delhi: Trolls will enforce India’s new media censorship laws appeared first on Coda Story.

The following day, Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent host on the state-owned TV channel Russia-1, welcomed her back, saying: “Psaki is a professional woman with a sense of humor, who, however, did not always understand that she was joking.”

As a career Democrat communications officer who has spent a considerable amount of time in Russia, Psaki has been a punching bag for Russia’s media for years, which painted her as a mouthpiece of American propaganda and a symbol of the Obama administration’s hardline approach to Moscow. After a few public gaffes — including mistakenly saying that Russia imports natural gas from Western Europe to Russia — a new phrase was coined: “The Great Psakiing,” meaning the egregious confusion of facts.

Despite Psaki’s awkward relationship with Russia, right-wing media outlets in the U.S. are now painting her as a communist-sympathizing, Kremlin-colluding pawn. 

The recent string of attacks started with a photograph of Psaki in a pink fur hat, taken in 2014. At the time, she was the State Department spokesperson. In the picture, she is flanked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then Secretary of State John Kerry. The hat, a gift from Lavrov, was adorned with the red star emblem of the Soviet Union.

It’s the kind of souvenir sold at virtually any tourist kiosk in Moscow, alongside nesting dolls and Putin T-shirts. But that didn’t stop Matt Wolking, deputy communications director of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, posting the image on Twitter:

Fox News, Breitbart and right-wing news site The Daily Caller joined the fray — the latter offering a helpful history lesson, pointing out that the Soviet Union “caused the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 20th century.”

“Nice commie hat,” tweeted conservative radio host Andrew Wilkow.

According to Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the goal is to portray Psaki and, by extension, Biden and the Democratic Party as being in thrall to Russia, thus shifting the narrative of collusion that has plagued the Trump administration.

“It doesn’t require evidence to be used against someone,” said Jamieson in a telephone interview. “The claim is going to be made as long as the charge sits there in Republican circles that Putin elected Donald Trump.” 

Psaki is a veteran Democrat staffer, but it was as White House communications director during the final years of the Obama administration that she really grabbed Russia’s attention.

The comedy TV segment “Psaki at Night” was the epitome of that obsession.  

“There’re a lot of things in the world that trigger the same reaction as appearances by Jen Psaki, the U.S. State Department’s representative: confusion, laughter and of course, a lot of questions,” said the show’s host Mikhail Gendelev, during a broadcast on Russia’s NTV channel in February 2015.

There were viral blooper reels from her briefings, memes and even the ironic hashtag #SavePsaki, after rumors that she had been fired. However, much of the coverage went beyond humor. Psaki became an easy target for Russian media, with much of its attention fixed on her gender.

“The fact that Psaki is a woman is an important element of why Russian state-aligned media has spent so much time trying to discredit her,” explained Vasily Gatov, the former head of development at the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

On one TV broadcast in 2015, head of Russia Today Dmitry Kiselyov joked that Psaki had announced that she was pregnant and fielded a question about the paternity of her child. “She lowered her head, said, ‘Hmm, I can’t say for sure. Let me get back to my office and look around,’” he said.

“They took her as a placeholder for their disgust with Hillary and generally the Obama administration, and just made a lot of nasty jokes about her and her performance,” said Gatov, during a telephone interview. “It was anti-Americanism, but it was personalized in the direction of Jen Psaki.”

Now that Psaki is poised to take on a new high-level role in the Biden administration, these old narratives are being recycled. Conservative media in the U.S. is following a similarly misogynistic line. While some praised the Biden administration’s all-female press team, pundits like Ben Shapiro have criticized the decision, saying that it is “not the most diverse team in history because there are no men.”

For now, Psaki is better-known in Russia than she is at home, but if such commentators have their way she will soon be a household name — for all the wrong reasons.

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In March 2019, Gabunada was linked to a network of 200 pages removed by Facebook for “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.” This opaque charge is most commonly levelled by the company at foreign influence and troll campaigns. So far, Gabunada is the only individual to have ever been named by the platform as the organizer of such an operation.

Despite the actions against his network, Gabunada’s methods have changed politics in the Philippines, where troll farms continue to churn out pro-government messages and attack opposition figures.

What is more, Gabunada believes that global platforms face a losing battle in trying to stem the spread of fake news. “No one can control what people can say on social media,” he told me, during a telephone conversation. 

This is a particular concern during a global health crisis. As Covid-19 has rampaged across the globe, so too have anti-science narratives and conspiracy theories related to the virus. The Philippines has reported 21,895 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 1,003 deaths, so far. 

The government’s handling of the situation has split the population and online discourse has become increasingly heated, with wild accusations and threats of violence made, often using troll accounts. 

“Right now in the Philippines – we see offensive posts from both sides,” said Gabunada, referring to the deluge of relentless vitriol raging between pro and anti-Duterte supporters on various social media platforms on a daily basis. “There are newly created accounts on Facebook and Twitter participating in the exchange around the government’s Covid-19 response, but they still belong to one of two sides of the debate – anti or pro.”

Amidst one of the longest lockdowns in the world, Gabunada, like many of Manila’s 12.5 million inhabitants, watches all of this from home quarantine. As a healthy distraction, he has taken up kitchen gardening, growing vegetables at home.

As the coronavirus continues to plague the Philippines – the country’s health ministry recently reported its fifth straight day of over a thousand infections – the government has moved to silence all criticism. A new anti-terror law which took effect on Saturday has been singled out by rights groups who say it could give the president unprecedented power to target dissent rather than terrorism. 

The law permits warrantless arrests and allows authorities to detain individuals for weeks without charge, surveillance for up to 90 days and mandates punishment as severe as lifetime imprisonment without parole. At least nine petitions to revoke parts or the entirety of the law have been filed in the supreme court.

The new legislation follows a crackdown on the media’s ability to report on the government. In June, Maria Ressa, founder and executive editor of the news website Rappler, and a former colleague were convicted of cyber libel over a 2012 story that alleged drugs and human trafficking links between a businessman and a top judge by a court in Manila, a charge that they both deny. 

Both have been fined $8,000 and could now face up to six years in prison. 

Against this backdrop of repression, Duterte and his administration freely spread political and medical disinformation to Filipino citizens. In early February, the country recorded the first Covid-19 death outside China. The president’s reaction was to hold a press briefing, in which he assured everyone that the pandemic would “die a natural death, even without vaccines.”

The following month, however, he delivered an impromptu national address, in which he told police to kill quarantine violators. “My orders to the police and military,” he said, “If there is trouble or the situation arises where your life's on the line, shoot them dead.”

As the crisis has played out, social media posts in support of his confused approach have become increasingly visible. Twitter accounts have been posting pro-Duterte propaganda, including lauding him for his “humility, respect, and gratefulness” and praising the anti-terrorism bill. 

While many of the tweets appear to be the product of troll operations or bots, Gabunada maintains that the proliferation of pro-government social media hashtags are from legitimate supporters of Duterte.

“It is the nature of social media to encourage sharing of opinions and messages,” he said, by way of explanation.

However, in April, Twitter suspended hundreds of accounts tweeting under specific hashtags defending the Philippine government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Washington Post, the accounts were “posting duplicate content across multiple accounts, creating duplicate or multiple accounts, and sending large numbers of unsolicited replies or mentions.” Most of the accounts posting pro-Duterte hashtags had “suspicious elements” such as bot-like numbers on Twitter account names and few followers. Many users were also new, with the accounts created in March or April. 

Earlier this month, Facebook released a statement, saying that it was looking into "reports of suspicious activity" in the Philippines, after students, journalists and opposition figures found a deluge of impostor accounts made under their names prompting an investigation by government agencies. While the imposter accounts have yet to publish any posts, opposition senator Francis Pangilinan said he suspected the accounts targeted those who oppose Duterte's anti-terror bill.

The weaponizing of social media can be traced back to the election in 2016. A 2017 Oxford University study found that Duterte spent $200,000 to hire up to 500 trolls during his presidential campaign the previous year. His social media strategy was overseen by Gabunada, who was working as a private contractor. 

According to Gabunada, Facebook became a cheap and convenient vehicle for the Duterte campaign when the platform struck deals with local cellular operators, making it free to use in the Philippines for anyone with a smartphone.

Now, the Philippines has become home to hundreds of troll farms. In March, Reporters Without Borders released a study that explained how supporters of the president acting as “cyber-troll armies” are using "call center hubs" to disseminate "fake or maliciously edited content” and to conduct “targeted harassment campaigns” against opposition figures. 

A NATO report published earlier this year found that troll farm employees can earn up to $1,000 per month working on political campaigns. The average monthly salary in the Philippines is $278 per month. 

In an effort to maintain distance from political figures and parties, these operations are also run by private contractors hired by political candidates. But Gabunada says that the 2016 campaign also saw the rise of an online army made up of genuine Duterte supporters. 

“At the end of the day, you wanted to convert people into campaigners and voters. Fake accounts can’t vote and paid trolls may not necessarily be there when a campaign needs to mobilize them,” he explained.

“We organized a network of volunteers to campaign and then we programmed a series of messages to post and amplify on social media accounts. We communicated with these organized groups and encouraged them to create their own Facebook groups and pages – all carrying the Duterte messages and getting as many within their circle to join them.”

Pushing back against disinformation 

Pro-Duterte troll farms have lately come up against a growing number of fact-checking groups and ordinary Filipinos dedicated to debunking misleading claims.

Jecon Dreisbach, 24, is a former volunteer at a fact-checking organization named the Consortium of Democracy and Disinformation. Today, he works as an independent researcher and educator, specializing in issues of nationalism, politics and the media. 

One of the biggest fake stories he has recently uncovered involved an April 2020 report by the Philippine News Agency that claimed "80% of Filipinos are satisfied with the government’s response to Covid-19.” The piece cited a survey conducted by a fake polling company based in Bulgaria. 

For their efforts, activists such as Dreisbach frequently become the targets of coordinated online harassment campaigns. 

“Whenever my criticisms of Duterte go viral, I get trolled,” he said. 

One notable post threatened Dreisbach with a lawsuit, stating that his fact-checking work was “instigating people to overthrow the government during a state of public emergency.”

And that is not the worst of it. On May 13, a Duterte supporter posted a tweet threatening to cut off the head of journalist Barnaby Lo. Lo notified the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation, but so far the case has not been pursued.

While acknowledging that the Philippines is “at a critical juncture in its political history,” Dreisbach remains surprisingly stoic. 

“It is my constitutional right to express my opinions against the Duterte regime,” he told me. 

Dreisbach also believes that the tide is turning. He largely attributes this change to the government’s handling of the coronavirus and its aggressive use of online platforms to spread misinformation and silence opposition voices.

“I am hopeful that Filipinos will be more critical of the policies and disinformation propaganda implemented by the regime,” he said. “Duterte may take advantage of the vulnerabilities we experience in this pandemic to advance his authoritarian desires, but the sovereign Filipino people will march for their fundamental human rights and justice.”

Visuals by Sofiya Voznaya

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Tensions between Beijing and Hong Kong have mounted since China recently approved a controversial new security law. Though details are still emerging, activists in Hong Kong have expressed concerns that the new legislation could effectively stamp out protests that have dominated the city for the past year.

While demonstrators took to the streets in response, pro-democracy activists like Jeffrey Ngo warn that pro-Beijing internet users have launched new disinformation campaigns about the latest round of protests.

Ngo says that some pro-Beijing internet trolls have deliberately mischaracterized the Hong Kong protesters as supporters of President Donald Trump.

“They try to frame Hong Kong and the Hong Kong protests as somehow being seen as xenophobic, pro-racism, and pro-Trump, to drive a wedge between the Hong Kong and the U.S. protesters,” said Ngo, a Hong Kong activist now based in Washington DC.

The U.S. has condemned the Hong Kong government’s oppression of protesters. Last November, some pro-democracy protesters and activists held a rally in support of President Trump’s signing of a U.S. law that imposes sanctions against China and Hong Kong officials considered responsible for human rights abuses in the territory. 

“There's a very small group of pro-Trump protesters in Hong Kong,” said Ngo. “They wave American flags and pictures of Trump and huge banners that say, ‘Please President Trump, liberate Hong Kong,’ at protests. Some Chinese amplify that kind of image, and brand the Hong Kong protests as fighting for something completely antithetical to what the U.S. Black Lives Matter protesters are fighting for.”

A tweet by the Qiao Collective, a group of diaspora Chinese “challenging U.S. aggression on China" is one example of a pro-Beijing post. The tweet accused protesters in Hong Kong of being aligned with the U.S. government: “HK protesters have repeatedly allied with the Trumps, Pompeos, Rubios, and Pelosis of the world — the architects & enforcers of the US regime of anti-Black death.”

The post generated more than 1,600 retweets and 5,200 likes.

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“After Trump sends note to Ginsburg" — you may have spotted it in your own YouTube feed, a video with significant views and engagement, but with a strange title. Surely, it’s clickbait. But YouTube star SmarterEveryDay opted to investigate the phenomenon and decided to figure out more behind the “viral” computer-voiced fake news vids and the spread of disinformation. In his video, he visits YouTube HQ, looks into online video software’s role, and talks with Renee DiResta — the director of research at New Knowledge — on how bad actors are able to manipulate social media algorithms.

“Regardless of whether this material is made in some far-off land to make a quick buck, or it is from a malicious nation trying to influence a foreign election, it is all taking advantage of this flaw in our heart - to fight with thy neighbor,” says the YouTube star, adding that the trolls make us hate each other, while taking our money.  

Why it matters: Social media giants and governments are working to limit the spread of fake news, trying to keep up with disinformation’s new tactics. But while doing so, new laws and regulations governments design give space to government censorship and the limiting of free press, while social media companies’ attempts are often after-the-fact when the damage has already been done.

Dig Deeper: “In a warm information war, the human mind is the territory. If you aren’t a combatant, you are the territory. And once a combatant wins over a sufficient number of minds, they have the power to influence culture and society, policy and politics,” warns Renee DiResta in her essay “The Digital Maginot Line.” While we prepared out digital defense line for cyber hacks, the cyber warriors instead went straight to the people.

And while the cyber warriors find their way into our hearts and minds, so have they been able to spread conspiracy theories and cults. Although the response to Donald Trump’s claim that windmills cause cancer has been met with derision, the spread of conspiracy theories online is more worrying. WhatsApp conspiracy theories leading to murder in India, the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, and Q-Anon supporters believing all of Trump’s enemies will be arrested and executed for being murderous child-eating pedophiles.

How it works: Dylan Roof, who murdered nine people, said that after hearing about Trayvon Martin's death he decided to Google him, finding an abundance of links to “black on white crime.” Radicalization in today’s world, often starts with a simple question online. Our story on HIV denialists in Russia shows how one simple search online can drag people into online groups and forums in which they are bombarded with the conspiracies, finding “like-minded’ new friends and alienating themselves from friends and family - just as the old cults did before.

Although their beliefs may seem outrageous to many, they are so strong that even when confronted with evidence disproving them, they still reject reality. SCOTUSblog set up a small experiment to see how conspiracy theorists react to evidence disproving their idea by following 82 Twitter accounts with over 10,000 followers that tweeted claims or insinuations (including questions) about Ginsburg’s death or incapacity. When Ginsburg returned to the bench, the overwhelming majority either ignored it completely as if nothing happened or found some new conspiracy to rationalize it.

Why it matters: The number of people believing in conspiracy theories is growing. When researchers at the University of Chicago surveyed people in 2014, they found that about 50% of the population supported at least one conspiracy theory. But when they repeated the study in November 2018, this number had risen to 61%. In the UK, this number is also currently at around 60%, according to a study by the University of Cambridge.

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Russia’s mission to the UK set the standard earlier this year, when it trolled the British government with snarky posts and memes in response to accusations that the Kremlin’s agents had tried to kill former double-agent Sergei Skripal. Increasingly, all Russian missions are adopting this combative approach, not simply reposting their foreign ministry’s statements.

Coda has taken a tour of Russian embassy social media accounts for some highlights of Kremlin diplomatic trolling.  

Crimea

With Crimea back in the headlines, it’s not surprising that the Russian Foreign Ministry office there is taking a defiant stance — but with a high-tech twist. Its Twitter account posted an interview with a robot being asked if Crimea should be scared of the sanctions that have been in place ever since Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.

“For me personally the sanctions are like mosquitos in Siberia,” the robot says in Russian, with English subtitles on the screen. “They are kind of there but they don’t really bother you.”

As a sidebar, it’s intriguing that the Russian Foreign Ministry still maintains a mission in Crimea — given that Moscow now considers the peninsular Russian, not foreign territory. It had a consulate there before when the peninsula was under Ukrainian control. It’s now called a “Representative Office,” but it is still under the foreign ministry.

United States

Something is “broken” in the US State Department. So said the Russian embassy in Washington in a social media post earlier this year, in response to what it called a “stream of ‘fake news’” about Russia’s actions in Syria and elsewhere emanating from the State Department. The embassy issued the post on International Women’s Day, adding its congratulations to Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman. She thanked them, but replied with a cold political message, calling on Russia to “live up to its international commitments and stop bombing innocent men, women and children in Syria.”

United Arab Emirates

Russian embassy social media accounts are full of posts about the beauty of life in Crimea, part of a coordinated push-back against its international isolation as a result of sanctions and the world’s refusal to recognize Russia’s annexation. But its mission in the UAE took this promotion drive to a new level with a quiz about Crimea. The award was, you guessed it, a vacation in Crimea.

“Dear Compatriots! We invite you to participate in the quiz "Crimea in the history of the Russian world," said the promotional blurb, before promising a one-week tour for two as the main prize. People taking part in the competition would get to know “the multi-dimensional nature of the history and culture of the Crimean peninsula.”

South Africa

Russian embassies have long tried to discredit the Syrian rescue volunteers known as the “White Helmets.” But its mission in South Africa went a step further, tweeting a photo of what appears to be actors on a film set as proof of what it says is a White Helmets attempt to  stage a hoax chemical attack.

The photo was later identified as a shot from the movie Revolution Man, a Syrian government propaganda film about a man who stages fake government attacks.

When President Vladimir Putin visited South Africa this summer, the embassy was unhappy at how it was covered in two major South African newspapers, accusing them of switching to “Pinocchio mode.”

Japan

Like many Russian social media accounts, its embassy in Tokyo has as its Twitter avatar Maria Butina, the Russian arrested on espionage charges in the US earlier this year. The mission routinely argues with its Twitter followers, sometimes accusing them of being uneducated.

“Russia lost 27 million people in World War II therefore was directly affected,” the embassy’s social media writer said in one post, before adding: “Undoubtedly, ignorance is unacceptable here. Please study the history.”

“This conversation is for those who graduated from school,” the embassy Twitter account responded to another critic. “So finish it and then contact us.” Other times, the mission just affects to be bored, posting memes from films like “Transformers.”

Senegal

The verified Facebook account of the Russian Embassy in Senegal is very active, sometimes posting more than ten times a day. It also tries to help “Vladimir Poutine”  by coming up with statements that the Russian President never made.

One purported statement from him that was posted last month, read: “Africa is a thousand times richer than Europe in mineral wealth, but a thousand times poorer when it comes to development. It is necessary only that African presidents create their own money and a common currency and I’ll give you my word that Europe will start to migrate to Africa.“

Another, post had Putin saying: “Russia has never lost the cold war… Because the cold war is not over.”  

However, both “quotes” have since been removed from the page.

Malta

After Western nations expelled dozens of Russian diplomats in response to accusations of Moscow’s involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the UK, the Russian mission to the tiny Mediterranean nation of Malta pulled out a clip from an old British political comedy to try to hit back.  

Australia

When a new black comedy about the conflict in Ukraine’s Donbass region won rave reviews in Australia, the Russian embassy there put up a post condemning it as "Russophobic Propaganda." The film focuses on the actions of Russian-backed separatists, and the embassy called the movie “blatantly racist,” denouncing what it called its “russophobic content in the worst Nazi traditions.” Its social media page also attacked a now familiar target for the Russian government, the online investigative site Bellingcat.

Canada

When the Russian embassy in Ottawa put out a post highlighting what it said was the presence of “monuments (sic) to Nazi collaborators” in Canada, many wondered why. The statue it showed does depict a Ukrainian nationalist leader known to have collaborated with the Nazis.

But the monument was erected more than 50 years ago in the city of Edmonton by the local Ukrainian community and even there, most people were unaware of it. The reason for Russia’s sudden interest may have been the fact that Canada had just passed its version of the so-called “Magnitsky Act,” aimed at punishing Russian human rights abusers.

United Kingdom

The Russian Embassy in London is still far out ahead though, both in its follower count and in how much attention its posts attract. While most Russian mission accounts have only around 3,000 followers on average, Russia’s UK embassy has at least 83,000.

This past year, it has been busy responding to accusations in relation to the Skripal affair, constantly finding new ways to ridicule the UK’s statements and investigations. It has tried to create an information fog around rumours that the West is hiding a secret biological weapons program in a US-funded laboratory in Georgia.

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Malkevich, a Russian media executive with ties to the Kremlin, arrived in Washington this week to launch USA Really, an English-language news site that spreads the kind of disinformation and discord attributed to Russian trolls in a high-profile indictment earlier this year.

It has not been a soft landing.

First, WeWork ejected him from the co-working space he’d rented across the street from the White House — just two hours after he entered the building.

Then, his plan to stage a rally in front of the White House to mark the website’s launch was dashed because he sent his permit request to the wrong office.

On Wednesday of this week, he showed up at a coffee shop in central Washington D.C. for his first interview with an American reporter. He wore a white t-shirt emblazoned with the face of the Russian foreign minister and the phrase “debili blyat,” which roughly translates as “fucking morons.”

“This is my answer for these strange people that are frightened by us,” he said.

His new website is no less sophomoric. In the past few days, it has included stories headlined, “Man Served His Friends Tacos Made From His Severed Limb” and “The New Little Ice Age Can Start in Montana.”

Malkevich is a former manager of local television and radio stations in Russia. He’s also a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, which advises the government on policy-making.

He says he was approached by a group of Russian journalists and businessmen to found USA Really after he gave a speech to the Russian Civic Chamber, a parliamentary advisory body, about the need to establish more media outlets abroad.

“We only have a few media working abroad. It’s so hard for them to stand against all this oppression,” he said.

Though he declined to say whose idea it was to launch the site, Malkevich admitted that his startup capital came from Federal News Agency, a Russian news outlet tied to the infamous Internet Research Agency, better known as the troll factory.

In February, the Internet Research Agency and 13 Russians alleged to have worked with it were indicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the American presidential election. Among them was Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of Putin’s close allies who is suspected of bankrolling the troll factory.

But if the launch of USA Really suggests Russia is still determined to spread disinformation among Americans, it also offers insight into the often clumsy nature of Russia’s information war. “We only have a few media working abroad. It’s so hard for them to stand against all this oppression.”

The news site was featured on the Rachel Maddow Show earlier this month but Malkevich said his own attempts to reach out to U.S media outlets about the launch have been fruitless.

“They totally ignore me,” he said. (Malkevich’s emails to this reporter somehow ended up in a spam folder.)

News that USA Really would be operating from an office just a block away from the White House did attract some press attention. WeWork declined to comment on its reasons for terminating Malkevich’s membership.

“Now we see that there is real freedom of speech in Russia,” he said. “But a Russian media company cannot do anything in the USA.”

Social media websites, heavily criticized for serving as a megaphone for the Russian disinformation campaigns during the U.S. election campaign, have been aggressively policing USA Really.

Facebook shut down the website’s page within a day of its launch in May. On Twitter, USA Really has been prevented from posting direct links to its website, forcing it to route articles through Google Plus posts.

On Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, Malkevich said the site has been able to post photos but is blocked from adding captions and hashtags.

The reasons for the crackdown are not totally clear. While the website is connected to individuals and entities subject to U.S. sanctions and indictments (through its affiliation with Federal News Agency), Malkevich is not included on either list and was able to enter the United States on a tourist visa.

Alina Polyakova, a Fellow at the Brookings Institute, argued that his ability to launch USA Really highlights the whack-a-mole nature of using sanctions and indictments against people who carry out the Kremlin’s bidding abroad.

“They will always be able to find a new person who we’ve never heard of before, who will be willing to do their dirty work,” she said.

“Am I concerned that this website is going to get millions and millions of views? No, but we shouldn’t look at it in isolation” she said, adding: “It’s really just one small part of a much broader ecosystem of disinformation.”

Malkevich admitted that he’s had difficulty recruiting native English speakers, but he has high hopes for the project.

“I want to make this media interesting and very much involved in the everyday life of Americans,” he said. “And maybe, in some years I can be a Pulitzer Prize winner.”

Towards the end of the interview, an employee wiping down the table behind him splashed cleaning fluid on his phone.

“Spies from the FBI. Poison,” he joked.

“Of course, I am being sarcastic” he added. “But there is still some concern.”

This piece was co-published with our editorial partner Foreign Policy.

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