Software bought by spy agencies, political parties and corporations, can control 30,000 fake profiles at once

Fake protests were also organized, so they could be broadcast on social media using the bot software, to fool people into thinking they were genuine grassroots protest movements.

Article Screenshot from The Guardian: Disinfo Black Ops - ‘Aims’: the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles. Exclusive: Team Jorge disinformation unit controls vast army of avatars with fake profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Amazon and Airbnb.

Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by “Team Jorge”, a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel. Tal Hanan, who runs the covert group using the pseudonym “Jorge”, told undercover reporters that they sold access to their software to unnamed intelligence agencies, political parties and corporate clients.

Each avatar, according to a demonstration Hanan gave the undercover reporters, is given a multifaceted digital backstory. Aims enables the creation of accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts. Hanan told the undercover reporters his avatars mimicked human behaviour and their posts were powered by artificial intelligence.

We also identified real-world events that appeared to have been staged to provide ammunition that could be leveraged in social media campaigns. One case involved a fake protest staged outside a company headquarters on Regent Street, central London. Three masked activists in baseball caps, sunglasses and masks filmed themselves waving placards. A similar leafletting campaign was staged near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, before being circulated on social media by Aims bots. It is not possible to know who the clients were in any of the campaigns, or even what their objective was.

Other techniques are also used to lend the avatars credibility and avoid the bot-detection systems created by tech platforms. Hanan said his bots were linked to SMS-verified phone numbers, and some even had credit cards. Aims also has different groups of avatars with various nationalities and languages, with evidence they have been pushing narratives in Russian, Spanish, French and Japanese.

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