Russian Ukraine disinformation bot farms

Occurred: February 2022

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Ukrainian authorities have shut down two Russian bot farms that were spreading false rumours about Ukraine, bomb threats and other disinformation designed to sow panic amongst the Ukranian people.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSB) took down a bot farm in Lviv it said was capable of deploying up to 18,000 fake accounts. And another smaller one that reportedly used 7,000 accounts to post fake information on Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber was also discovered.

Facebook parent company Meta also shut down a fake, pro-Russian influence campaign attempting to spread anti-Ukrainian propaganda using dozens of AI-generated fake profiles.

Operator: Anonymous/pseudonymous
Developer: Unclear/unknown
Country: Ukraine; Russia
Sector: Politics
Purpose: Scare/confuse/destabilise
Technology: Bot/intelligent agent
Issue: Mis/disinformation
Transparency: Governance