Twin Facebook pages advertise themselves as providing newsy and up-to-the-minute coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. But on a given day, their followers might see videos claiming Norwegians raided Russian ships, Vladimir Putin was defeated on “all fronts,” or that a single British ship blocked a Russian fleet.

None of those headlines are true. But that doesn’t stop the pages Fios Vinks and Fiosl Liesi from earning clicks, views and a monetizable following through false reporting on the war.

The behavior of these obscure pages with their difficult-to-decipher names offers a case study of organized misinformation in one of its cheapest forms. Combined, these pages distribute dozens of videos a day — many plucked from YouTube and paired with sensational headlines — that aim to funnel viewers into larger Facebook groups that could be sold to buyers seeking large social media audiences. The pages appear to be part of a larger network and managed by a single, anonymous account. Their campaigns spread fast, outpacing fact-checks and creating confusion.

“It’s a parasitic network that’s trying to monetize the invasion of another country,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council.

After fact-checking videos from both pages multiple times, PolitiFact wanted to learn more about the origins of the pages, their prolific posting patterns, and what their endgames might be.

PolitiFact reached out to both Facebook pages...

Read Full Story: https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/how-facebook-pages-exploit-russias...