The Insider 20 December 2024 19:04 RU The Russian disinformation network “Matryoshka” has launched a new campaign on the Bluesky social network. Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, has been one of the first researchers to detect its activity. So far, four Russian-made fake videos have been identified on the platform. Each disinformation video begins with a real person — a professor, a student from a top university, or a recognized expert — introducing themselves and beginning to speak on a topic unrelated to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The footage then transitions to segments that do not show the speaker on screen — while what sounds like their voice continues narrating. In these moments, the speaker seems to promote claims that the West should end its support for Ukraine, that Europe should align its future with Russia, and that Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator — or even a vampire. The videos are published alongside phrases like “Do you think that’s true?” or “You can confirm or deny this information, can’t you?” accompanied by tags of well-known media outlets and fact-checkers. They are then reposted by hundreds of other accounts. The number of shares reach the hundreds on X (formerly Twitter), while on the newer Bluesky, reposts remain low — the most widely shared video has so far garnered 288 reposts, and another just four. (…) The Russian disinformation campaign is expected to gain further traction on Bluesky. While the platform’s audience remains far smaller than that of X — Bluesky’s numbers stand at 25 million users compared to X’s 335 million monthly active users — Bluesky has seen a surge in migration in recent months. This trend has been driven largely by Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election and Elon Musk’s controversial “reforms” that introduced unpopular changes to the platform he now owns.
via teh insider: Russian disinfo network “Matryoshka” is migrating to Bluesky as exodus from X continues