Russian disinformation campaigns discover Bluesky
Fake accounts are increasingly active on Bluesky, spreading disinformation and testing the network's countermeasures.
(Image: Shutterstock.com/ LP2 Studio)
With the growing popularity of the Twitter alternative Bluesky, this network is also becoming increasingly interesting for disinformation campaigns. Currently, the pro-Russian influence operations "Doppelganger" and "Matryoshka" are apparently expanding their activities to Bluesky.
On Friday, the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) reported on a current campaign with hundreds of fake accounts. According to disinformation expert Saman Nazari, quoted by RND, their characteristics point to the "doppelganger" operation. The anti-bot collective antibot4navalny on Bluesky comes to the same conclusion.
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"Matryoshka" has apparently been active on Bluesky for some time. At the end of 2024, The Insider reported that this disinformation operation was expanding its activity on Bluesky. The operation is following the current migration of users from X/Twitter to Bluesky, partly by copying fake news content from X, but also partly with content that is apparently primarily published on Bluesky. The French news agency AFP was recently able to attribute around 50 posts on Bluesky to "Matryoshka".
Old and new tactics
According to the AFP, the posts by "Matryoshka" were particularly notable for their AI-generated deep fakes. In these posts, university professors, for example, tell false information that they have never actually said. Another tactic of "Matryoshka", known from X/Twitter, is to use fake accounts to point out the fakes to fact-checkers and thus tie up their capacities.
According to research by antibot4navalny, "Matryoshka" is also currently creating new user profiles on Bluesky by copying legitimate accounts and their tweets from X/Twitter, sometimes with altered account names. Matryoshka then inserts new posts with disinformation between the copied legitimate posts.
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The accounts associated with "doppelgangers", on the other hand, post replies to apparently randomly selected, legitimate Bluesky posts. The replies have no connection to the content of the original post and contain pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian short messages, images or cartoons.
Doppelgänger originally came to prominence in 2022 with fake news sites. These were modeled on well-known media, but contained false reports and pro-Russian propaganda. The name "Doppelgänger" is derived from the copied appearance of real news sites. In the following years, the operation expanded its methods and caused problems on Twitter with posts from fake accounts, some of which were also advertised.
Testing defense mechanisms
With these initial campaigns, the disinformation operations – are presumably deliberately testing – Bluesky's moderation mechanisms. These appear to be having an effect, with most of the "matryoshka" posts identified by the AFP disappearing from the platform relatively quickly. The community itself also produces moderation services, known as labelers, which tackle the problem and allow users to mark or hide disinformation.
It remains to be seen how well these mechanisms will work if both Bluesky and disinformation campaigns continue to grow there in the future. Security researcher Valentin Chatelet told AFP that Bluesky's measures are very reactive and that the network still has to show that it can also take proactive action against such campaigns. (syt)
