Elon Musk, Useful Idiot

Speaking of “Leon” Musk, here’s Victor Tangermann, writing for The Byte:

In March, the US government accused the founder of Moscow-based company Social Design Agency of orchestrating a “persistent foreign malign influence campaign” on behalf of the Kremlin. The propaganda operation, dubbed “Doppelganger,” involved spreading memes, deepfaked videos, and falsified documents online to alienate the West from Ukraine and its leadership following Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The company is overseen by a top aide to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and has attempted to discredit Ukraine’s military and political leadership by flooding social media with propaganda.

And as it turns out, infamously gullible billionaire and X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have gotten duped by the campaign. In October 2023, Musk shared a meme to his millions of followers showing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky straining his face, with the caption reading: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”

According to leaked documents obtained by a number of European media outlets, the meme — alongside a number of other posts that were not shared by Musk — was put together by none other than the Social Design Agency.

Most people might reconsider their social media habits after finding out they inadvertently shared Russian-made propaganda memes.

★ Friday, 20 September 2024