Summary and context

Hoaxlines found accounts that had pushed false claims about the 2009 Swine Flu and the vaccine against it had also promoted Russian state media and pro-Kremlin narratives and disinformation years later.1

Although these accounts’ behavior and traits suggested inauthenticity and some exclusively spread false information, some remain active on the platform today [5–9]. Some users fell dormant, active only between 2009 and 2010, but others, like the example in this report, spread content and claims likely intended to influence real users [6, 10–14].

We encountered the focus of this case study while collecting data for a retrospective longitudinal study. The example user—data from others will be released in a subsequent report— posted content, stances, and it behaved similar to accounts found in past, confirmed information operations [15–19]. Hoaxlines found the case study account had in the past 24 to 48 hours (April 7 to 9):

• Attempted to deflect blame from Russia for the brutal slaughter of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha, Ukraine [20].
• Shared an Iranian state-media article while claiming the United States is responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians because it has supplied weapons to Ukraine [21].
• Shared Russian state-controlled content that claimed that Ukrainian soldiers were using civilians as human shields and accused Ukraine of taking food away from people in Donbas. The accusation is a particularly dark assertion given Russia’s history of killing millions of Ukrainians via intentional starvation [22,23].
• Accused Jewish people of instigating World War 3 and asserted that Zelensky is responsible for the deaths of any Ukrainian male because he “ordered” them “to become combatants.”

• Posted “This is a war, a US war against Russia. Why? Because the US is NATO. What is NATO? NATO is a Horribles Parade costume, it’s a Halloween mask,” with an article from Iranian-state media.
• Claimed that new variants were endangering Americans because the US government gave (sic) “Billions to a bunch of Neo-Nazi's and a Zionist Puppet in Ukraine.”

The cost of a failure to act

Had the account been removed in 2010 when it promoted conspiracy theories about the Swine flu and the vaccine to prevent it, it would not be on the platform to help the Kremlin sow confusion and avoid accountability for war crimes [24–26]. EUvsDisinfo wrote on April 7 [20]:

The Kremlin is trying to occupy the information space by flooding it with contradicting “explanations” of the events. The goal is not only to deflect the blame for this particular atrocity against peaceful civilians but also to pre-emptively shape narratives for countering and discrediting any evidence or investigation into Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Hoaxlines has previously reported that suspensions do not appear to and perhaps cannot change the behavior of accounts [27,28]. Disciplinary action cannot cause a genuine user to materialize. Thus this response has little chance of being effective with type of account.

Examples of content

Here are examples of content from the case study subject that made it identifiable as an inauthentic account over a decade ago:

• Swine flu (H1N1) and the vaccine
• Bill Gates conspiracy theories
• Dengue fever
• Julian Assange
• Syria and chemical weapons use
• Monsanto conspiracies
• GMOs
• Ebola virus
• The downing of MH17
• Invasion of Crimea
• John McCain and ISIS
• Everything is George Soros’ fault
• Hilary Clinton’s emails
• Zika virus and the vaccine
• COVID origin
• Sputnik V (Russian COVID vaccine) is the best
• NATO is out to get Russia
• Bioweapons in Ukraine (2022)
• Anti-semitism and Azov
• Bucha Massacre denial