Operation Overload

Operation Overload Today's newsletter is written by Stephen McDermott

?It's not often that you can say you've been directly?targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign. Last week, The Journal reported how we are among more than 200 newsrooms and fact-checkers who've been flooded with emails from pro-Kremlin accounts urging us to look into dubious claims about Ukraine and EU countries. In case you missed it, the international campaign -?dubbed Operation Overload?- was essentially a time-wasting exercise that saw unnecessary work created for journalists, disinformation researchers and fact-checkers in Europe and the US by asking them to verify and debunk hoax content. It involved bad actors sending?emails to newsrooms with links to posts on Russian Telegram channels, inauthentic accounts on X, or news stories on Russia-aligned websites, including the newly discovered Pravda2 network (like the Irish-language Russian propaganda website?that we found in April). Those who sent the emails attempted to come across as genuine by asking things like "is this real?" or "can you please verify this?" alongside multiple links to posts featuring the narratives they were trying to push. Many of the hundreds of emails of this nature that we've received since last year have "fact check"?in the subject line - a blatant attempt to?get us to publish fact-checks debunking certain narratives, thereby widening their reach. Finnish group Check First released a report last week that definitively linked the campaign to Russia, but it seemed obvious from the get-go that this was who was behind it. At first, the posts we were sent only featured anti-Ukraine narratives that claimed Ukraine was doing badly in the war, or which questioned the leadership of?Volodymyr Zelenskyy?and sought to stir up tensions around Ukrainian refugees living in EU countries. The first email we received on 19 December last year asked us to verify claims circulating on X that a café in Paris had placed a decal of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its door with the word "beggar" written on his back. Days later, we received another email asking us to verify news circulating in Russian media that the Estonian government had launched a service where citizens could "report data on Ukrainian refugees" living near them. However, as the campaign evolved, bad actors?also sought to push new narratives around major global events, like the Paris Olympics and the upcoming US presidential election. In another email sent to?The Journal?in early August, we were asked to check a false claim that President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach personally benefitted from “having more LGBT members in the ranks of Olympic athletes”. Yet another email sent during the Games claimed that infrastructure from Paralympic athletes was not ready yet, that infrastructure in the Olympic village was crumbling, and asked: “The Olympics: Why did everyone hate Paris?” The campaign has also become more sophisticated over time, and used things like voice cloning of well-known public figures (e.g. Elon Musk) or manipulated images with the logos of major newsrooms on them to make fake stories appear like they were genuinely being published elsewhere. In recent weeks,?we've been sent emails with an image of the Fox News logo claiming that fast food chain KFC is suing Kamala Harris, and another with the Financial Times logo claiming that Americans are withdrawing cash and closing their bank accounts in the run-up to the election. Thankfully, we thought these emails were suspicious from the off and managed to avoid being diverted by what was being sent to us. The fact that the emails were part of a co-ordinated effort to push?Russia propaganda narratives was pretty obvious from the start. Although we regularly get email requests to fact-check all kinds of different narratives, it was highly unusual to receive?correspondence from two 'readers' in a matter of days last December asking us to look into claims with an anti-Ukraine slant involving two different EU countries. A bigger giveaway was the fact that tipsters were including?multiple links to the messaging app Telegram, with claims featuring?in non-Irish groups and written in Russian - things we're not used to getting in our inboxes. A more definitive link was made by Check First after they analysed sets of QR codes which linked to stories that were sent in emails to some newsrooms. They found that many QR codes?were likely created as early as 2022 by an individual connected to Otri, a Russian "full-cycle marketing agency". The group also discovered that one of the accounts that was used to send emails in August 2024 was accessed from a residential Russian IP address at the time the emails were sent. At the time of writing, more than 71,000 emails have been sent so far during the campaign, which is still ongoing. As Check First have pointed out, sending emails is not illegal in and of itself, but the methods used by the Operation Overload campaign are still a violation?of the Terms of Service of platforms like Gmail, which do not allow spamming, phishing, or the creation of?misleading content. In most cases, the narratives within the emails haven't emerged in mainstream media or fact-checking outlets, but they've still caused some level of disruption to journalists who've had to check them and come to the realisation that they're part of a wider campaign. But occasionally, fake stories contained in emails are fact-checked and written about, like the above-mentioned narrative about the sticker?of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a Paris cafe or another claiming that Kamala Harris' husband is linked to a company that manufactures puberty blockers for children. That isn't to say those fact-checkers were somehow duped or that they shouldn't have written about the misinformation they found; after all, it's their job to debunk false narratives that are circulating on social media. Rather, it's indicative of how Operation Overload presents a tricky dilemma for fact-checkers, who have to choose between the possibility of amplifying certain narratives by debunking them or letting them spread uninhibited. It's not an easy problem to solve, but hopefully its effects can be minimised with the wider knowledge of the campaign's existence and who is behind it.

Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, who were among those targeted by fake narratives as part of Operation Overload (Picture Credit:?(Sipa US?/ Alamy Live News)

Trends in Europe

Europe has recently been no stranger to immigration-related misinformation, with similar narratives - that migrants are criminals or that they're treated better than citizens in their host countries - emerging across different countries despite language and cultural barriers. However, the latest report from our colleagues at the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) notes that there was a new wave of false stories aimed at immigrants and asylum seekers at the end of the summer. The report, which covers the month of August, particularly mentioned how misinformation spread after the Southport stabbing in the UK at the end of July. As an example of how viral some of that misinformation went, fact-checkers in Spain, France and Portugal all reported having to debunk a false claim that the UK planned to release?violent offenders from prisons to make room for people arrested in the riots that followed the stabbing. Anti-immigrant narratives also spread in Europe last month after the stabbing of an 11-year-old boy in a Spanish village,?an event which went somewhat under the radar in Ireland. EDMO members reported detecting misinformation that the attacker was an immigrant, and a false narrative that emerged afterwards which claimed?that four children were murdered in a few hours in Spain. In both the British and Spanish cases, false claims were weaponised by far-right groups to?spread xenophobia and conspiracies. As we have seen previously in Ireland and with the same case in the UK, such false claims have incited a series of violent riots. Meanwhile, EDMO's report also noted a rise in gendered misinformation about the US election which targeted Kamala Harris. The falsehoods included claims that Harris used to be a sex worker, that she manipulated?images of her rallies to make them appear as if they had been attended by more people, and that she admitted that climate change policies really sought to reduce?population. Misinformation also targeted Tim Walz after he was named as Harris' running mate, including false stories that claimed he would be willing to protect paedophiles or allow voter fraud. None of those claims have been detected in Ireland yet - though there is plenty of time between now and November for them to start appearing here.

What did we cover?last month?

We've published no fewer than ten fact-checking articles since our last newsletter in August, covering everything from?deepfakes, manipulated images, context manipulations and the age-old housing debate. Political parties were subject to a couple of manipulated images and videos in the past few weeks. At the start of the month, we debunked a?deepfake video of Simon Harris that was shared on Facebook -?the first time we've?ever written about such a video (even if it was a basic fake)?being produced using an Irish politician's image. A few days later, we wrote about a fake image doing the rounds suggesting that Sinn Féin were selling 'burkas' via their online store, in?what was part of a wider trend by far-right figures to falsely associate mainstream politicians with Islam. The trend wasn't just limited to Ireland: with the US presidential race hotting up, we debunked various claims about Democrat candidate Kamala Harris, including fake images which showed her in Communist attire and others which suggested she was involved in a hit-and-run incident that paralysed a 13-year-old girl. In another incident of a manipulated image, we also debunked a false claim?shared on social media which claimed RTé reported that the yet-to-be-built National Children's Hospital would be used to house asylum seekers. Two other claims we fact-checked relied on real footage, but enabled the spread of misinformation by taking videos out of context: one suggested that Buzz Aldrin confirmed that the Moon landings were faked, while another alleged that a video showing a man smashing up an airport was filmed in Dublin. A couple of older claims also re-surfaced during the month, when they were re-packaged as new trends. In a Covid-era throwback, a screenshot shared by a fringe Irish group claimed that PCR tests are “potentially up to 97% inaccurate”; we explained how that claim relies on a misrepresentation of a Portuguese court ruling from 2020. And another Facebook incorrectly claimed that a leaflet was circulated in Irish schools encouraging children to make friends with strangers - though as we wrote,?the images shared were the same ones used in a years-old debunked claim about the same leaflets being circulated in British schools.

Have you gotten a message on WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter that you’re not sure about and want us to check it out? Send a message to our dedicated WhatsApp number on 083 876 0971 or email factcheck@thejournal.ie?and we’ll look into it.

Thanks again for signing up. If you have a friend you'd think would be interested in knowing the story behind the Internet's myths, send this email onto them to get them to sign up. Until next time...? Stephen McDermott? Editor, The Journal FactCheck

About this newsletter

The Journal FactCheck unit is located within the newsroom of one of Ireland's most-read online news sources, The Journal. Since 2017, we have been the only verified Irish signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and abide by the organisation's Code of Principles. You can find out more about our organisation, structure and funding here.

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