Facebook: Meta makes money with Russian disinformation despite sanctions

Between August 2023 and October 2024 alone, Meta earned around USD 338,000 with political ads from a Russian propaganda organization as part of a single disinformation campaign on Facebook. And this was only in Europe and despite the fact that the troll factory, which was ultimately subordinate to the Kremlin, was already on sanctions lists of the EU, the USA and the UK. This is according to the report "Influence by Design", published on Friday by the Finnish research institute Check First together with Reset.Tech in London and AI Forensics in Paris. The authors emphasize: The findings raise "serious questions about Meta's role in enabling state-sponsored influence operations".

The analysis focuses on a propaganda operation with over 8,000 advertising banners on Facebook, behind which the Russian Social Design Agency (SDA) stands. Alongside Structura and Argon Labs, the Moscow-based agency is one of the initiators of the Kremlin-controlled doppelganger campaign, which has been running for two years. At the heart of this campaign was the initiation of well-known media brands and associated websites that were used to spread false reports. The campaign now being investigated, which only highlights a small section of Russian propaganda campaigns, is said to be a further development of the doppelganger approach.

The experts estimate that the ads investigated led to more than 123,000 clicks by Facebook users in Germany, France, Poland and Italy. The doppelganger operation was also previously associated with influence operations in the USA, Israel & Co. It is clear how precise and sophisticated the SDA's approach is in some cases. Its advertisements are tailored to current political events and, according to the report, use "inflammatory narratives and visually appealing content to maximize reach and impact".

Propaganda as a weapon against democracies

As examples, the authors highlight banners that exploit current incidents such as the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and seek to increase polarization within the targeted societies. The terrorist attack in a Moscow suburb in March 2024, in which 145 people lost their lives, was also an occasion for false reports. The advertisements often appeared within 48 hours of such events and attempted to influence public perception. After the Hamas attacks on 7 October, for example, the SDA spread the false claim that Ukraine had sold weapons to the terrorist organization.

The ads reached more than 237,000 accounts within two to three days and, according to the authors, underlined "the operation's ability to use current events as a weapon for geopolitical narratives". It is striking that the SDA closely followed almost all reports on the campaign and thus evaluated its effectiveness.

The results indicated "significant gaps in Meta's compliance with its own content moderation policies and its obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA)," it said. "Despite claims of enforcing strict identity verification and transparency measures for political ads, the platform repeatedly failed to block SDA-related campaigns." Stronger oversight and enforcement mechanisms are needed. Social media operators must ensure "that their systems are not used as a weapon to undermine democratic processes". The new meta-course aimed at Donald Trump points in the opposite direction.

(ndi)