Fakery Playing with Fire
More exploitation of information voids by inauthentic farmed-and-flipped xenophobia grift accounts
In mid-February, I exposed the inauthentic origins of the “Radio Europe” account, and noted its similarity to older farmed+flipped account “Europe Invasion” (or whatever it’s called this week). Both accounts share a common pattern of being engagement-farmed in Turkish-language communities with bait content, and flipping to the European xenophobia grift ecosystem once plumped up a bit.
Radio Fake Europe and the Amazing Monetized Turk
Our information environment is getting more polluted still, and windows of transparency are closing still. The incentives are higher than ever, and the risks lower than ever, to reach for the big top on social media as a slop/grift account. Thankfully, at least some of those who attempt this cannot evade detection and exposure, thanks to tools OSINT inv…
Well, it’s clearly going whole-hog on the parallels, because it attempted to repeat the performance not once, but twice.
Topping Up the Tinderbox
For background, note the contribution of the “Europe Invasion” account to pushing conspiracism and blame in an anti-immigrant/-Muslim direction back when the Southport stabbing attack took place. This allegation went out just two hours after the attack, and was the first major social media post making the specific claim. The riots that followed across the UK for days after targeted immigrants’ businesses, asylum-seeker accommodations, and mosques, and threatened asylum law centres.
Later in the evening, its follower count ensured that its boosting of an even more specific fork of disinformation floating around X spread further yet.
Here comes its successor (if not alt) rushing in the wake of a recent church burning in county Donegal in Ireland with an unsubstantiated allegation that it was the work of “Afghans”. This post remains up, and gained much traction (over a million views).
And less than a week later, stating—again without evidence—that “Pakistani Muslims” were responsible for another church burning in Port Talbot in Wales. The post also remains up—despite a direct reply by the South Wales police labeling the claim false, and despite a Community Note—and also racked up high-impact boosts and high engagement numbers (millions of views).
My investigation collaborator on influence operation “The Qatar Plot” ,
wrote about the account’s disinformation about the Welsh incident at his blog.
The press is also paying attention.
of Irish media outlet RTÉ wrote a piece for its Clarity fact-checking and counter-misinfo strand, including analysis by me and Marc.
Pouring Gasoline
Neither the account nor Musk/X appear to care about the direct debunks and press coverage of both the false posts, and the Community Note on one. Indeed, Musk has engaged with (and thereby boosted) content from the account— after I exposed its inauthenticity.
Not only has the account kept both false posts up, but the account has gotten so confident in its invulnerability as to go and form a dyad (again, paralleling the “Europe Invasion”/”Daily Immigrants” relationship) with another new account, so they can cross-boost. Indeed, the only thing the new account does is boost it, which leads me to strongly suspect it as having been created for that purpose. Again, all this happened after I exposed it.
Lighting the Fuse
The brazen crank-yanking, post-exposé operation of this account, and other inauthentic accounts in its ecosystem, show that X is not serious about delivering the genuine discourse users would reasonably expect from a platform into which they’re investing their time. X’s protectiveness against research/investigator transparency and interoperability also ensure that users who remain on the platform cannot volunteer to be alerted to or opt out of the garbage they’re being fed, as they’re milked by the platform and its grifter contingent for attention sold to what advertisers yet buy there.
The account’s incredibly irresponsible allegations have effects, even if Community Notes are eventually tacked on. In both the Irish and Welsh church burning cases, the damage was limited to property; one can only imagine what mayhem would have erupted had multiple young children been massacred, as in the case of Southport.
Still, some in the replies have already expressed ominous expectations based on what they’ve been told by it did happen.
Bonus: An Old Flame
I also noticed our friend “Crazy Vibes” reply-spamming “Radio Europe”.
More about this account’s own saga of sus in my post here:
Spammy Vibes and Monetized Jibes
In my earlier post, I exposed a prominent Western right-wing account “Radio Europe” as a scrubbed-and-rebranded Turkish thirst account running an ideological grift—one among many others of similar origin, operating similarly repurposed digital assets in similar spaces.