Andy Carvin, the managing editor and research director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), tells WIRED that his organization, which conducts a vast amount of research into disinformation and other online harms, has been tracking Doppelganger for more than two years. The scope of the operation should surprise few, he says, given the fake news sites follow an obvious template, and that populating them with AI-generated text is simple.
“Russian operations like Doppelganger are like throwing spaghetti at a wall,” he says. “They toss out as much as they can and see what sticks.”
Meta, in a written statement on Tuesday, said it had banned RT’s parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, and “other related entities” globally across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for engaging in what it called “foreign interference activity.” (“Meta is discrediting itself,” the Kremlin replied Tuesday, claiming the ban has endangered the company’s “prospects” for “normalizing” relations with Russia.)
Testifying on Wednesday, Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg stressed the industry-wide nature of the problem facing voters online. “People trying to interfere with elections rarely target a single platform,” he said, adding that Meta is, nevertheless, “confident” in its ability to protect the integrity of “not only this year’s elections in the United States, but elections everywhere.”
Warner appeared less than fully convinced, noting the use of paid advertisements in recent malign influence campaigns. “I would have thought,” he said, “eight years later, we would be better at at least screening the advertisers.”
He added that, seven months ago, over two dozen tech companies had signed the AI Elections Accord in Munich—an agreement to invest in research and the development of countermeasures against harmful AI. While some of the firms have been responsive, he said, others have ignored repeated inquiries by US lawmakers, many eager to hear how those investments played out.
While talking up Google’s efforts to “identify problematic accounts, particularly around election ads,” Alphabet’s chief legal officer, Kent Walker, was halted mid-sentence. Citing conversations with the Treasury Department, Warner interrupted to say that he’d confirmed as recently as February that both Google and Meta have “repeatedly allowed Russian influence actors, including sanctioned entities, to use your ad tools.”
The Virginia senator stressed that Congress needed to know specifically “how much content” relevant bad actors had paid to promote to US audiences this year. “And we’re going to need that [information] extraordinarily fast,” he added, referring as well to details of how many Americans specifically had seen the content. Walker replied to say that Google had taken down “something like 11,000 efforts by Russian-associated entities to post content on YouTube and the like.”
Warner additionally urged the officials against viewing Election Day as if it were an end-zone. Of equal and great importance is the integrity of the news that reaches voters, he stressed, in the days and weeks that follow.