Deepfakes And Political Manipulation
Not a day seems to go by without the American media writing about Russia’s Internet meddling in the US elections. Major international and specialist publications headquartered in the US are routinely regurgitating the myth about “Russian trolls” and “GRU hackers” without a single shred of evidence besides unsubstantiated accusations. Actually, evidence has been provided by a private company, but this evidence points to the contrary. As one Google project so convincingly shows, for example, for just $100 you can create the illusion that a Russian company is trying to influence public opinion within America. All you need to do is buy a mobile phone and a few SIM cards in Panama, choose a common Russian name and surname and use it to set up a Yandex account, then indicate your IP address is in Saint Petersburg using NordVPN. You can then set up an account with AdWords, pay for advertising using the details of a legally registered company, and place political content on the Internet that could be regarded as inflammatory. This was what was done by US citizens from Google and they didn’t hesitate to report on it. So what is stopping the NSA, the CIA, or some Russophobe fanatics familiar with hacking techniques from doing exactly the same thing, regardless of whether they belong to a political party or not? Common sense suggests that this is exactly what is being done to create the appearance of Russian interference, but no one is able to provide any real evidence, of course.
Another example of how the US can influence public opinion is the creation of fake propaganda, a technique that was developed by the US military in Iraq in the early 2000s.
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