P.S. I’ve already bounced two of the accounts named in this article. At least the $TSLAQ community on twitter is calling out the Russian bots, but not the fanbois kissing Musk’s arse:
Russian propagandists said to buy Twitter blue-check verifications
SAN FRANCSICO - Accounts pushing Kremlin propaganda are using Twitter’s new paid verification system to appear more prominently on the global platform, another sign that Elon Musk’s takeover is accelerating the spread of politically charged misinformation, a nonprofit research group has found.
The accounts claim to be based outside of Russia, so they can pay for verification without running afoul of U.S. sanctions. But they pass along articles from state-run media, statements by Russian officials, and lies about Ukraine from Kremlin allies, according to the research group Reset, which shared its findings with The Washington Post.
One of the accounts describes itself in English as “No woke. No BLM. No gender pronouns … Just Anti-Imperialism.” Purporting to be based in San Francisco, its profile picture shows a blond woman wearing a fur hat with a hammer and sickle badge. Another account’s biographical blurb says it is “Doing my part to stop Western support for the Ukrainian war machine, one taxpayer at a time.” It regularly tweets videos it says show Russians killing Ukrainian soldiers.
Oh, and there’s this paragraph concerning Traitor Musk:
Musk has boosted one of the accounts by replying to its tweets, including one spreading a lie that thousands of NATO troops had died in Ukraine.
