Troll Humor
Tongue in cheek, divisive online personas pursue Russian disinformation goals
Note added August 14 2024: This is a post the Natto Team published on April 21, 2023. It looks at a Russian information operation from 2020 that posed as two networks of news sites — one with a far-right orientation and the other with a leftist one — whose very names were a crass inside joke for Russian-speakers. The Internet Research Agency — the troll farm that likely created the sites — subsequently closed down, but the personas and other infrastructure continue to produce divisive and pro-Russian messaging. Today’s so-called “Doppelgänger” campaign and other Russia-based efforts, some using artificial intelligence, target the US election, the Olympics in France, and global support for Ukraine. Iran, too, has created false news outlets appealing to people on different sides of the US political spectrum, Microsoft reported in 2024. Assessments vary on the effectiveness of these disinformation efforts, but strong political opposition has silenced many US disinformation researchers, effectively blinding voters on the eve of the US election. For more on disinformation and how to counter it, see the three part Natto Thoughts series beginning here and several other items summarized here.During the contentious 2020 US presidential campaign, amid political storms over racial justice and pandemic lockdowns, a Kremlin-linked troll farm created two networks of English-language webpages and online accounts posing as left- and right-wing news sources. These apparently aimed to spread Russian state messaging and deepen social divides within the US and Europe. These networks adhered to well-documented tactics of Russian information operations but added inside jokes boasting of their power to deceive. The networks resurfaced in the leadup to the 2022 US midterm elections, openly trumpeting their Kremlin connections. Though their boasts may exaggerate the size of their audience, such campaigns help poison already-toxic public discourse in the US and other targeted countries.
NAEBC and PeaceData—Classic Russian Information Operations
As with many Russian information operations, the two networks simultaneously inflamed both sides of contentious issues. One, a network associated with website “naebc[.]com” (hereafter NAEBC) posed as a far-right news organization; the other, a network surrounding the website “peacedata[.]net” (hereafter PeaceData) published stories in English and Arabic from a leftist angle. Both outlets recruited English-speaking freelance writers; both of them had editors with profile photos generated by artificial intelligence; and the editorial staffs in both outlets claimed to be European but made language errors consistent with those of Russian speakers.
Screenshot of naebc[.]com, cached 20 November 2020
Screenshot of peacedata[.]net, cached 2 September 2020. After media reports exposing it as a Russian operation, peacedata[.]net shut down
Facebook parent company Meta, as well as reportedly the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, have attributed NAEBC and PeaceData activity to Russian operatives, likely those of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian troll farm that interfered with the 2016 US presidential election. Domain registration information suggests that Russian propaganda agency RT may also support the NAEBC network.
The similarity between the PeaceData and NAEBC online networks suggests that the same people created both. Both NAEBC and PeaceData had a similar approach to politics, though from opposite angles. Both of them dealt with divisive topics such as US race relations and radical Islam. Both favored Donald Trump’s candidacy, with NAEBC portraying rival candidate Joe Biden as too radical and PeaceData as not progressive enough. The two networks’ advocacy for Trump is consistent with the US intelligence agency’s finding that Russian information operations favored Trump’s over Biden’s candidacy.
The networks resurfaced in 2022, “called to action like sleeper cells,” updating their messaging with voter fraud allegations and criticism of US support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. NAEBC postings targeting specific candidates suggested “sophistication in the campaign operators’ understanding of the U.S. political system,” as cybersecurity firm Mandiant noted.
Screenshot from NAEBC-Associated inauthentic account “Alan_naebc” on Gab.com, 4 June 2022
The two networks exemplify common tactics that analysts have identified in Russian disinformation campaigns:
Increasingly recruiting English-speakers or amplifying their messaging rather than creating content in detectably imperfect English.
“Laundering” disinformation by publishing it originally on fringe websites and then promoting it on higher-readership websites.
Simultaneously amplifying both sides of a divisive issue, such as race relations and controversies over vaccination and pandemic-era public health restrictions.
Using messages that appeal to legitimate social concerns about issues such as racial inequality and child safety.
Their Very Names an Inside Russian Joke
The very names of the periodicals were a taunting pun. The naebc[.]com site changed its rather meaningless name several times during mid-2020, according to cybersecurity analyst Chris Vickery; its successive names included “Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens,” “National Alliance For Ethnic Balance And Consciousness,” and “Newsroom for American and European Base Cause." However, the acronym remained.
“NAEBC” is an inside joke for Russian-speakers: it sounds like the Russian word наебать (pronounced “nayobat’), which can mean to deceive or “screw over.” The name “PeaceData,” depending on the pronunciation, resembles the Russian пиздато (pronounced “pizdato”), which can mean “f**king awesome.”
These two networks are not the only IRA assets with tongue-in-cheek names.
● An earlier operation, likely IRA-linked, used the name EBLA (“Eliminating Barriers to the Liberation of Africa”). The acronym EBLA resembles the Russian noun “ебля” (“f*cking”).” By choosing these names, the Kremlin-linked trolls appeared to be boasting of their prowess at deceiving Western audiences.
● Another IRA-associated inauthentic organization bore the name "Foundation to Battle Injustice" (Фонд Борьбы с Репрессиями). In both English and Russian, the initials (FBI or ФБР) match those of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
NAEBC-associated inauthentic “Nora Berka” Persona Reposts Article from IRA-Funded “Foundation to Battle Injustice,” Screenshot of Posting Dated 21 October 2022, Cached 5 November 2022
2022: Blatant Boasting
By 2022 the NAEBC-associated activity became more blatant, as did that of the IRA’s founder, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a mercenary and information warfare entrepreneur and former caterer known as “Putin’s chef.”
For years, Prigozhin had denied funding the IRA. However, on the day before the 2022 US midterm elections, Prigozhin boasted, “"We have interfered (in US elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere.” His phrasing was an inside joke for anyone with memories of Soviet days; it echoed a famous slogan idolizing the Communist country’s founder: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live.”
In 2022 NAEBC-associated operatives also openly shared links to the above-mentioned Foundation to Battle Injustice, which boasted of being "founded with the assistance of Russian entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigozhin."
After the 2022 US midterm election, some NAEBC personas also openly referred to themselves as Russian trolls. They may have been exaggerating their influence in order to get credit from their sponsors at home, while continuing their attempt to stir doubt about the credibility of the election. As part of the landscape of information warfare “entrepreneurs” (described in the piece “Putin: The Spy as Hero)
and responding to Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield and in global politics (described in the piece “Stymied in Ukraine”
Prigozhin seemed to be touting the prowess of Russian trolls as a way to appear stronger.
Rarely Viral, the Posts Still Help Poison the Online Atmosphere
In some cases, posts that originated with these IRA actors have reached large mainstream social media audiences. For example, a NAEBC-associated account purporting to be a fan account for the pro-Trump music group Kid Rock amassed over 50,000 followers. One post on the false Kid Rock fan page, echoing divisive Russian-amplified messages about climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, read, “Domestic oil is the new ivermectin. You can’t have it because it would resolve the crisis they need you to go through.” A well-known figure in the US political scene reposted this item on his own Instagram account.
With exceptions like these, however, many of these social media accounts individually have relatively small audiences. For example, in December 2022 study, disinformation research group Graphika identified 19 likely NAEBC-associated accounts with an audience of about 33,000 unique followers spread across right-wing social media platforms Gab, Gettr, Parler, and Truth Social. Some analyses say such campaigns have limited reach because they “preach to the converted,” mostly targeting self-selected right-wing audiences on such platforms.
However, the vast majority of Russian inauthentic social media campaigns have gone undetected, according to media reports citing purportedly leaked US government material. “Thousands or hundreds of thousands” of Russia-origin accounts targeting the US remain active on Twitter, as former chief of trust and safety at Twitter told a US Congressional committee in February 2023. This hints at the massive scale of Russian information efforts to drown out reputable sources of information and disorient and divide citizens of the US and other target societies.
Even a disinformation network with few known followers can have outsize impact. Russian influence operations elicit engagement and interact with other accounts across platforms “to produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts,” as disinformation researcher Caroline Orr Bueno phrased it. For example, through disinformation “laundering,” a story initially posted on a fringe website can spread widely and acquire a veneer of legitimacy through coordinated reposting and “likes” on better-known websites such as GatewayPundit and ZeroHedge, until it may air on Fox News.
More broadly, as Sam Greene of Kings College London and the Center for European Policy Analysis pointed out, disinformation operations can alter the terms and tenor of social discourse. Greene writes, “as soon as disinformation gets a toe-hold in a person’s social environment, it will begin to exert a gravitational pull on all of the individuals within that environment, likely overcoming whatever in-build resistance to falsehoods those individuals may or may not have.”
As the 2024 election season approaches in the United States and other countries, citizens can expect renewed disinformation efforts on social media.