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To: norsky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthFront

SouthFront (sometimes written South Front) is a multilingual website registered in Russia. It has been accused of being an outlet for disinformation and being under the control of the Russian government, and is sanctioned by the US Treasury and banned by social media platforms for this reason.
History

In 2014, Radio Free Europe, reported: “The English-language Facebook page for South Front, which has slightly more than 11,500 subscribers, is a mix of carefully selected ‘news’ from the region — usually from sources like LifeNews, a video news outlet believed to have ties to Russia’s security services — and anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western memes.”[1] They described SouthFront as “a group supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.”[1]

Writing in 2019, the European Union’s East StratCom Task Force analyzed site meta-data and reported, “South Front is registered in Russia, money donated to the site goes to Russia and the editor is named Anastasia. But the most compelling evidence for South Front’s being Russian is in the content...South Front is loyally relaying whatever suits the Kremlin, pretending not to be Russian.”[2] Two days after that report appeared, SouthFront anonymized their videos, removing Russian text that had listed the name of their video editor as “Natasha.”[3] The second report also cited WHOIS information for southfront.org, showing the domain was registered on April 30, 2015, with Russian registrar REG.RU.[4]

In April 2020, Facebook and Twitter deleted many pages and accounts they said were linked to “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” by Russian actors, mentioning South Front as having “pushed misleading articles, questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.”[5] According to EU vs Disinfo, however, both SouthFront and Crimea-based Newsfront were able to evade much of the Facebook effort.[6][7]

In February 2022, Meta (formerly Facebook, Inc.) took action against both SouthFront and NewsFront, for a new round of deceptive activity.[5] The Facebook report said that a network of fake accounts claiming to be people from Kyiv amplified content from “websites masquerading as independent news outlets, publishing claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state.”[8]

In 2022, the US Treasury department said, “Although it previously focused on the 2020 U.S. presidential election, SouthFront has also spread information suggesting that Ukraine or NATO could use chemical weapons within the country with hopes to blame it on Russia.”[9]


15 posted on 03/18/2023 7:43:57 PM PDT by Chode (there is no fall back position, there's no rally point, there is no LZ... we're on our own. #FJB)
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To: Chode

oh my, you mean it is not as accurate as the CIA disinfo of the MSM, that is not right.


18 posted on 03/18/2023 9:12:01 PM PDT by norsky ( <P> <a href= > <hi/a> <P><img src=" "width=500"></img>)
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