Russian disinformation operators are deploying an army of bots to inflate view counts of fictitious posts about celebrities and Democratic candidates ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
AI-fabricated video clips of well-known actors and musicians — including Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts and Cher — attacking Democrats began appearing on X in early September, some urging people to join a campaign dubbed #AllDemocratsAreCriminals. Scores of other clips have made false allegations of corruption and improprieties by Democratic candidates.
Social media researchers have attributed the posts to a Russian state-backed operation known as Matryoshka, or Operation Overload, which floods social media with clips purportedly from established media outlets. Bloomberg News reviewed 130 videos and doctored newspaper front pages targeting the U.S. midterms published by this network from Sept. 10 to Oct. 9, most of them flagged by anonymous disinformation research group Antibot4Navalny. U.S.-based research groups Graphika and dTeam corroborated and supplemented the narratives.
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