Elon Musk, Useful Idiot
Speaking of “Leon” Musk, here’s Victor Tangermann, writing for The Byte:
In March, the US government accused the founder of
Moscow-based company Social Design Agency of orchestrating a
“persistent foreign malign influence campaign” on behalf of the
Kremlin. The propaganda operation, dubbed “Doppelganger,” involved
spreading memes, deepfaked videos, and falsified documents online
to alienate the West from Ukraine and its leadership following
Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The company is overseen by a top aide to Russian
president Vladimir Putin, and has attempted to discredit Ukraine’s
military and political leadership by flooding social media with
propaganda.
And as it turns out, infamously gullible billionaire
and X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have gotten
duped by the campaign. In October 2023, Musk shared a
meme to his millions of followers showing Ukrainian
president Volodymyr Zelensky straining his face, with the caption
reading: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a
billion dollars in aid.”
According to leaked documents obtained by a number of European
media outlets, the meme — alongside a number of other
posts that were not shared by Musk — was put together by none
other than the Social Design Agency.
Most people might reconsider their social media habits after finding out they inadvertently shared Russian-made propaganda memes.
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Speaking of “Leon” Musk, here’s Victor Tangermann, writing for The Byte:
In March, the US government accused the founder of
Moscow-based company Social Design Agency of orchestrating a
“persistent foreign malign influence campaign” on behalf of the
Kremlin. The propaganda operation, dubbed “Doppelganger,” involved
spreading memes, deepfaked videos, and falsified documents online
to alienate the West from Ukraine and its leadership following
Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The company is overseen by a top aide to Russian
president Vladimir Putin, and has attempted to discredit Ukraine’s
military and political leadership by flooding social media with
propaganda.
And as it turns out, infamously gullible billionaire
and X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have gotten
duped by the campaign. In October 2023, Musk shared a
meme to his millions of followers showing Ukrainian
president Volodymyr Zelensky straining his face, with the caption
reading: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a
billion dollars in aid.”
According to leaked documents obtained by a number of European
media outlets, the meme — alongside a number of other
posts that were not shared by Musk — was put together by none
other than the Social Design Agency.
Most people might reconsider their social media habits after finding out they inadvertently shared Russian-made propaganda memes.