How fakes about the war in Ukraine spread on Twitter – BBC
Twitter users with a prepaid Blue tick, who pay to promote their content to other users of the social network, are spreading misleading posts about the Russian war in Ukraine.
The BBC writes about it.
As noted, the social network has recently seen a lot of misinformation regarding the recent unrest in France, but one viral post last week also focused on US military aid to Ukraine.
The post attached a screenshot of what appeared to be a headline from a news site, along with an image of two rifles.
“The French police were fired upon by American rifles, which may have come from Ukraine,” the headline read.
In addition, several Twitter accounts with Blue followers shared the post, which was viewed more than a million times.
The BBC traced the message as coming from pro-Kremlin Telegram channels.
However, the image used in the post first appeared on a Russian military blog in 2012 about a shooting competition at a range outside Moscow.
The newspaper added that it could not find any online article with the headline and image shared on Twitter. Also, no evidence was found that weapons from the US for Ukraine were used during the protests in France.
Also, several blue-tick Twitter accounts recently shared a statement that Russia had discovered “baby factories” in Ukraine.
Children between the ages of two and seven are allegedly “raised in factories” and then either sent to “child sex brothels” or their organs are removed and sold in the West.
According to the BBC, similar articles were published in March by The People’s Voice, an alternative name for YourNewsWire, which fact-checking organizations call one of the biggest producers of fake news on the Internet. They have previously promoted a wide range of false and misleading stories.
A similar situation with the spread of disinformation on Twitter happened at the end of June in the center of Kramatorsk, when eight people were killed as a result of Russian rocket fire.
Immediately after the attack, a post by the Twitter account Blue, which positions itself as a news source, claimed that the strike was mistakenly launched by Ukraine and hit a military barracks housing NATO troops and foreign mercenaries.