Moscow meddling in US elections using fake Americans
Robert Galbraith / Reuters
On 8 June 2016, Melvin Redick posted a link from dcleaks.com, a site containing materials which had been hacked from the Democratic Party servers, to his Facebook account. Redick, residing in Pennsylvania wrote: “The guys tell the truth about Hillary Clinton, George Soros and other American leaders. Interesting indeed.” But Redick`s account turned out to be a fake due to the following:
- No student by the name of Redick was found in Pennsylvania University as claimed in his personal info;
- There was no mention of a trip to Brasil, though some pictures published on his account were taken there;
- Redick has not made a single personal post, writing exclusively about the upcoming US elections and later about the Trump presidency.
According to The New York Times, Redick`s account is just one of dozens, possibly thousands of fake accounts created by Russian hackers to wage information wars.
S tealing and making the information taken from the Democratic Party servers public, is not the only example of Russia meddling in the US elections. Fake accounts have been created to oppose Hillary Clinton and support Trump`s efforts in order to improve relations with Russia – and the practice continues. Fake Twitter accounts have also been created. The network is more prone to propaganda than Facebook. Tags can make it to the top irrespective of previous posts and number of followers. All one has to do to promote a tag is to create enough accounts.
The American media continuously investigates allegations surrounding Russian meddling in the US elections with new cases appearing every month.
