Kamala Harris: Fake videos about her come from Russia, according to Microsoft

US election 2024
Microsoft: Russian trolls spread fake news about Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris speaks and gestures in front of a US flag

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is apparently the target of disinformation campaigns

© Matt Rourke/AP / DPA

Microsoft claims to have uncovered who is behind videos with false information about Kamala Harris. The group is called Storm-1516 and comes from Russia.

Microsoft says it has uncovered a Russian disinformation campaign against US presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The US software company referred to a video circulating online in which the vice president is falsely accused of injuring a 13-year-old girl in a car accident in 2011 and of driving away. This video was created by a Russian group called Storm-1516. It is said to be a so-called troll factory for online manipulation that is close to the Kremlin. The revelation of the incident is another indication that Russia is increasing its efforts to exert political influence in the run-up to the US presidential and congressional elections in November. The Russian embassy in Washington did not initially respond to a request for comment.

After President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, “Russian influence operations” initially struggled to shift their actions against the Democratic camp, Microsoft said in a blog post on Tuesday. However, in late August, Storm-1516 began producing content linking Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, to “outrageous fake conspiracy theories” in an attempt to discredit them.

Misleading video about Kamala Harris

Storm-1516 is known, according to experts, for producing misleading videos in which actors pose as whistleblowers or journalists who spread scandalous misinformation. In the case of the alleged hit-and-run video, Microsoft says the group paid an actor to appear as the man who was falsely said to have been paralyzed since the accident. It also set up a fake website for a nonexistent news channel called “KBSF-TV.” The fabricated story was spread via this site and also circulated on social media, such as X.com. In total, the video was viewed an estimated 2.7 million times.

The US Department of Justice recently filed a lawsuit against two employees of the Russian state broadcaster RT on charges of money laundering in connection with alleged attempts to influence the elections in seven weeks. The social media group Meta, in turn, decided to ban RT and other Russian state media worldwide from its online networks Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads. The US company justified the ban with “foreign interference activities” using fake news.

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Reuters

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