WASHINGTON: Meet “Eva,” “Sophia,” and “Samantha” — fake accounts which pose as chic American women who support Donald Trump on the platform X, disguising themselves by using stolen photographs of European fashion and beauty influencers, according to a study published Wednesday.
The report by the nonprofit Center for Information Resilience (CIR) comes as researchers express alarm ahead of the US election in November that the site owned by Elon Musk — who has endorsed Trump — is plagued with fake accounts and political disinformation.
CIR said it uncovered 16 accounts that used images of European influencers — without their permission — to pose as young women promoting Trump and encouraging thousands of followers to vote for the Republican nominee.
These accounts, which use stolen images of real people to appear authentic, were among 56 profiles that appear to be part of a coordinated campaign to push pro-Trump content, it added.
“By using images of the influencers, the accounts recognize the value of creating a believable human persona, steering clear of the generic photos and bot-like usernames usually associated with fake accounts,” CIR’s report said.
It was unclear who was behind the digital deception or whether the accounts were pushing pro-Trump content for ideological or monetary gain.
The fake profiles use everyday images from the influencers’ Instagram accounts — including pictures of them at the beach or walking their dog — which are captioned with MAGA-related hashtags or pledges to vote for Trump, CIR said.
MAGA, or Make America Great Again, is a political slogan associated with Trump and his campaign.
Many of the accounts have attempted to spread misinformation about hot-button political subjects such as a recent assassination attempt against Trump, his Democratic rival Kamala Harris’s ethnicity and US military aid to Ukraine, the report said.
Some accounts also promote anti-vaccine and Covid-19 conspiracies, with some posts viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
“They post about divisive issues in US politics in a bid to exploit pre-existing tensions,” the report said.
One of the impersonators is “Luna,” a self-described 32-year-old “MAGA Trump supporter,” who used images of a German fashion influencer named Debbie Nederlof, according to CNN, which jointly conducted the investigation with CIR.
Nederlof, a single mother, voiced anger and frustration over the misuse of her images, saying she had “nothing to do with the United States, with Trump, the political things over there.”
“What the hell do I — from a small place in Germany — care about US politics?” she said.
X did not respond to a request for comment.
Impersonation is a violation of the platform’s rules, and accounts posing as another person, group or organization may be “permanently suspended,” according to X’s website.
Musk appears to exert an outsized influence on US voters through the platform and his own personal account, which is regularly flagged by fact-checkers for spreading political falsehoods to his nearly 196 million followers.
Since Musk’s 2022 acquisition of X, the platform has gutted trust and safety teams and scaled back content moderation efforts once used to tame misinformation, making it what researchers call a haven for disinformation.
Pro-Trump X accounts use stolen photos of European influencers: study
https://arab.news/za5b9
Pro-Trump X accounts use stolen photos of European influencers: study
Israel extends closure of Al Jazeera’s West Bank office
- Israel suspended Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office for 45 days in September on charges of “incitement to and support for terrorism”
- Announcement comes days after Palestinian Authority also suspended the network’s broadcasts for four months
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli authorities renewed a closure order for Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, days after the Palestinian Authority suspended the network’s broadcasts for four months.
An AFP journalist reported that Israeli soldiers posted the extension order Tuesday morning on the entrance of the building housing Al Jazeera’s offices in central Ramallah, a city under full Palestinian Authority security control.
The extension applies from December 22 and lasts 45 days.
In September, Israeli forces raided the Ramallah office and issued an initial 45-day closure order.
At the time, staff were instructed to leave the premises and take their personal belongings.
The move came months after Israel’s government approved a decision in May to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel, also closing its offices for an initial 45-day period, which was extended for a fourth time by a Tel Aviv court in September.
Later in September, Israel’s government announced it was revoking the press credentials of Al Jazeera journalists in the country.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has long been at odds with Al Jazeera, a dispute that has escalated since the Gaza war began following Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The Israeli army has repeatedly accused the network’s reporters in Gaza of being “terrorist operatives” affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
The Qatari channel denies the accusations, and says Israel systematically targets its staff in Gaza.
Meta replaces fact-checking with X-style community notes
- Meta cited bias and excessive content reviews as key factor in ending fact-checking program
- The social media company also announced plans to allow “more speech” by easing restrictions on discussions of mainstream topics like immigration and gender
LONDON: Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Tuesday it’s scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
Starting in the US, Meta will end its fact-checking program with independent third parties. The company said it decided to end the program because expert fact checkers had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact checked.
Instead, it will pivot to a Community Notes model that uses crowdsourced fact-checking contributions from users.
“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context,” Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a blog post.
The social media company also said it plans to allow “more speech” by lifting some restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discussion in order to focus on illegal and “high severity violations” like terrorism, child sexual exploitation and drugs.
Meta said that its approach of building complex systems to manage content on its platforms has “gone too far” and has made “too many mistakes” by censoring too much content.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the changes are in part sparked by political events including Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
Meta’s quasi-independent Oversight Board, which was set up to act as a referee on controversial content decisions, said it welcomed the changes and looked forward to working with the company “to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible.”
India press watchdog demands journalist murder probe
- Chandrakar’s body was found on January 3 after police tracked his mobile phone records following his family reporting him missing
NEW DELHI: India’s media watchdog has demanded a thorough investigation after a journalist’s battered body was found stuffed in a septic tank covered with concrete.
Freelance journalist Mukesh Chandrakar, 28, had reported widely on corruption and a decades-old Maoist insurgency in India’s central Chhattisgarh state, and ran a popular YouTube channel “Bastar Junction.”
The Press Council of India expressed “concern” over the suspected murder of Chandrakar, calling for a report on the “facts of the case” in a statement late Saturday.
Chandrakar’s body was found on January 3 after police tracked his mobile phone records following his family reporting him missing.
Three people have been arrested.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by Naxalite rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized indigenous people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
Vishnu Deo Sai, chief minister of Chhattisgarh from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called Chandrakar’s death “heartbreaking” and promised the “harshest punishment” for those found responsible.
India was ranked 159 last year on the World Press Freedom Index, run by Reporters Without Borders.
Washington Post cartoonist quits after paper rejects sketch of Bezos bowing to Trump
- Ann Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press
- Wapo exec says the cartoon was rejected only to avoid repetition, because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon
A cartoonist has decided to quit her job at the Washington Post after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaes posted a message Friday on the online platform Substack saying that she drew a cartoon showing a group of media executives bowing before Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticize “billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.” Several executives, Bezos among them, have been spotted at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago. She accused them of having lucrative government contracts and working to eliminate regulations.
Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote. “For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists issued a statement Saturday accusing the Post of “political cowardice” and asking other cartoonists to post Telnaes’ sketch with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in a show of solidarity.
“Tyranny ends at pen point,” the association said. “It thrives in the dark, and the Washington Post simply closed its eyes and gave in like a punch-drunk boxer.”
The Post’s communications director, Liza Pluto, provided The Associated Press on Saturday with a statement from David Shipley, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. Shipley said in the statement that he disagrees with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.”
He said he decided to nix the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was set to publish another.
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. ... The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley said.
Al-Qaeda has executed Yemeni journalist abducted 9 years ago, says media watchdog
- Mohamed Al-Maqri disappeared in the Arabian Peninsula while covering an anti-group protest in Al-Mukalla
LONDON: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has executed Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Maqri after holding him captive for nine years, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Thursday.
Al-Maqri, a correspondent for the television channel Yemen Today, was abducted in 2015 while covering an anti-AQAP protest in Al-Mukalla, the capital of the southern governorate of Hadhramaut.
He was executed along with 10 other individuals after years of enforced disappearance.
“The killing of Mohamed Al-Maqri highlights the extreme dangers Yemeni journalists face while reporting from one of the world’s perilous conflict zones,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA (Middle East and North Africa) program coordinator.
“Enforced disappearances continue to endanger their lives.”
Rezaian condemned the act and called for accountability, urging all factions in Yemen to abandon such “abhorrent practices.”
The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate also condemned the execution, saying it was working with “the relevant authorities to investigate the crime, prosecute the perpetrators, recover the journalist’s body, and deliver it to his family.”
Al-Maqri had been held incommunicado by AQAP since Oct. 12, 2015, following his abduction during the protest.
The group accused the individuals of “spying against the mujahedeen,” a label the group uses for its fighters.
His death underscores the increasing dangers for journalists operating in Yemen, where armed groups have targeted media professionals as part of broader efforts to suppress dissent and control narratives.
At least two other Yemeni journalists remain subjected to enforced disappearances, a practice characterized by abduction and the refusal to disclose a person’s fate or whereabouts.
Waheed Al-Sufi, the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Arabiya, has been missing since April 2015 and is thought to be being held by the Houthi movement.
Naseh Shaker, who was last heard from on Nov. 19, 2024, is believed to be being held by the Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist organization in southern Yemen.
Yemen continues to rank among the deadliest countries for journalists, with armed conflict and factional violence leaving media workers vulnerable to abductions, disappearances, and killings.
