While Elon Musk was looking for new sources of income by offering a paid subscription on Twitter, at the same time he gave more visibility to Russian propaganda content. And this thanks to the Twitter Blue offer, which he has launched and which offers any Internet user to benefit -in addition to the certification badge- from a greater dissemination of their tweets, report it Washington Post.
The findings of the Reset research group, transmitted to the American newspaper, show that many pro-Russian accounts have recently bought the famous blue badge, while transmitting disinformation articles about the war in Ukraine. A large part of the identified accounts were created in recent months.
Among the examples cited, an account called LogKa, created in February 2022, regularly broadcasts false information about the war in Ukraine and now has nearly 35,000 subscribers. Some of the accounts cited are presented to Internet users as independent media.
HE Washington Post it also mentions the @Runews account, online for more than ten years, who purchased their certification in mid-January. On February 6, Elon Musk even responded to one of his tweets. He claimed that 157,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 2,458 NATO soldiers had been killed during the war. The billionaire replied: “A tragic loss of life”, although the veracity of these statements has been questioned by a warning broadcast directly by Twitter.
As he observes Washington Posttweet impressions from the @Runews account have exceeded 10 million since January, a sharp increase from the pre-certification period.
Also, Reset considers the subscription system to be a problem in itself. It allows any account to come forward, even those that “openly share Russian state media content, Kremlin-aligned disinformation about the conflict in Ukraine, and outright war propaganda,” the research group says.
To qualify for such a distinction and circumvent US sanctions, the accounts claim to be based outside of Russia.
Elon Musk has a special role against Russia. With his company SpaceX, he provided thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine so that he could continue to have access to the Internet. He also regularly takes a position on the war in Ukraine by tweeting. He had proposed a ready-made solution to end the conflict, which had been welcomed by Russia.
Above all, Elon Musk fired most of Twitter’s moderation teams, as well as influence operations experts. He also reinstated many accounts that had been banned for hate speech and misinformation.
For its part, although Russia blocks access to Twitter, the social network is still accessible via VPN and is especially useful for pro-Putin personalities to spread their messages.
Source: BFM TV
