#Fake Bellingcat videos and impersonations

86 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

rain inlet
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For several months there has been a slow but steady appearance of multiple videos impersonating the BBC reporting on fake Bellingcat investigations, disinforming about Ukrainian top figures, Hunter Biden, weapon sales to Hamas, among others. Bellingcat is conducting its own internal investigation on the matter but here we the community can also help around.

Here the known videos, with the oldest known source to our knowledge (Thanks Subtle for this list, I will add more if more were to appear):

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If anyone can provide with the missing videos, just share them here and I will add them when I can sailorsalute

tulip kiln
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Working on a list.

tulip kiln
rain inlet
tulip kiln
tulip kiln
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Told you I was tired. 🤭

rain inlet
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That makes two of us 🤭

tulip kiln
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More tomorrow.

rain inlet
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If you want me to add the spreadsheet to the top post, let me know sailorsalute

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Also, is the latest rebuttal from Bcat to a new video or in reference to last weeks (which I actually missed, and interesting to see the Olympics theme)

tulip kiln
rain inlet
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Got it sailorsalute

tulip kiln
tulip kiln
lean otter
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Thanks for doing this 🙂

white reef
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I have a feeling at some point these videos are going to veer into 'Ukraine Nazis Azov aaa' territory. If it does please someone pester me, because it'll probably be one kernel of truth wrapped in twelve layers of BS

tulip kiln
white reef
trim silo
trim silo
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I kinda just think it's an oligarch completing some overpriced contract through

tulip kiln
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No more fakes originating from sheyhtamir since this publication. 🤔

tight ginkgo
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I have seen a few

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https://t.me/sheyhtamir1974/94005

Telegram
Шейх Тамир

‼️Пентагон потребовал от Киева провести полный аудит всего переданного Украине американского оружия в преддверии ожидаемого сокращения, а возможно и полного прекращения снабжения после победы на выборах президента США Дональда Трампа.

tulip kiln
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I should have expressed myself more clearly; no more of these videos claiming to be from news orgs, claiming Bellingcat involvement.

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He averaged one a month from October '23 to May '24.

tulip kiln
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I didn't have time to add others last night. Maybe I can expand the list later.

tulip kiln
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Anyone can add a comment here or in the document, by the way.

waxen axle
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Might’ve not been something new but RFI wrote an article about those fake messages (in french)

https://www.rfi.fr/fr/moyen-orient/20231011-un-faux-reportage-de-la-bbc-pour-faire-croire-à-un-soutien-de-l-ukraine-au-hamas

« Looking for traces of this infox on the web, we notice that it began circulating on Russian-speaking Telegram channels. In particular, we find it published on Tuesday, October 10 at 12:44 pm on the channel of Tamir Shakaliev, an openly pro-Russian Ukrainian influencer. He comments: "Bellingcat's British journalists had a revelation when suddenly so many Western weapons that were in Ukraine appeared in the hands of Hamas". »

RFI
Un faux reportage de la BBC pour faire croire à un soutien de l’Ukr...

Le Hamas a-t-il reçu de l’aide extérieure pour développer son arsenal militaire ? C’est la question qui se pose après l’attaque meurtrière du mouvement islamiste contre Israël, le samedi 7 octobre 2023.…

tulip kiln
tulip kiln
tulip kiln
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Added yesterday’s new one and one from April ‘22 (the Kramatorsk train station, so be warned), though no Bellingcat in the latter. The text is very clumsy. Interesting early sample.

rain inlet
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Updated on the top of the post, thanks sailorsalute

trim silo
tulip kiln
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Is it me or are they losing traction?

lean otter
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First example (not BBC /bellingcat) fake with a voiceover: https://t.me/ProRU_BY/126603

Telegram
ПроRU_BY🇷🇺🇧🇾

‼️⚠️Американская церковь сатаны поблагодарила организаторов Олимпиады за церемонию "открытия".

Верховный жрец назвал бесовскую вакханалию — "торжеством "свободы" над Богом".
Что ещё надо знать об управляющих западным миром?

strong plover
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Yoinking this over from the general chat

Found a fairly standard but interesting Russian info op on X.

https://x.com/slendeeeeeerman/status/1824475388833304790

Random hacked account posting altered/fabricated videos purporting to be from major European publications, all highly negative on Ukraine (organ harvesting, etc.)

X
Twitter ·
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Also appears to be sending it in DMs to people

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Appears that this round targets the Independent, La Croix, the FT, Euro News, the BBC, and DW.

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@tulip kiln added

tulip kiln
rain inlet
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What's interesting is that all the previous "Euronews" videos we saw were in France but now it switched to Poland, and the style is slightly different to those ones

strong plover
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Maybe these are an older round of videos getting reposted

tulip kiln
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I've only seen one of them before. And that one was posted later.
Disclaimer: I'm not doing exhaustive searches, just registering what I happen to come across.

rain inlet
tulip kiln
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Haven’t seen any yet. They’re probably spread through different channels that I’m regularly seeing.

lean otter
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We're currently trying out tools to map networks of the retweets on Twitter/X. If you have any recommendations let us know.

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This morning we witnessed one fake 'report' on X grow in views incredibly quickly:

image.png
tardy kiln
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yup thats insane

tight dirge
lean otter
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Potentially. If you find them linked on another platform let us know.

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We're exploring inside X first. We've seen indications that they've also been mass dm'ing.

gritty plinth
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i checked some followers of the zane account, all created 2013

rain inlet
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Fake Bellingcat videos and impersonations

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Renamed the channel so it doesn't cover just the Bcat + BBC videos as this is a wider trend sailorsalute

trim silo
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I was waiting for a recording session to start for a couple of hours yesterday so was manually looking through these accounts. I found about 15 tweets with around 300 retweets each from bots, but it wasn't always the same bots. It seems there's a wider network of bots and groups of them would all retweet in one go, rather than the same ones again and again. But often there would be overlaps in the groups, so I would start looking at the accounts the retweeted one tweet, and usually after looking at first 10 I'd find a new video posted with a phoney verification code image, and then look at the accounts who retweeted that one, which would lead to another video. I noticed most of these accounts were retweeting other tweets that appeared on the other bot accounts, some with much more retweets, and I got the impression they were retweeted by more bots in the network than the Russian disinformation tweets. It could be there's packages of retweets and views that are being sold, with different levels of spend, but all using the same bot network.

rain inlet
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Whole thread worth a read

quiet pier
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Eliot has a real opportunity to get really crafty with memes here and fuck with their operational evaluations

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They already know he knows and makes public statements about it, which, given they're also adjusting operational output based off exactly that. Great level of memeability there.

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I wonder what the explicit purpose of the emails to Eliot is though, they don't really seem to be framed in a way seeking a response. There could be some layered stuff from that angle still but hard to assess. That or maybe the links are burned and they're trying to breach his accs?

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@trim silo Sorry for the ping here if ya don't want them, curious on your opinion on that last Q though, I can definitely think of cases where they've hoped for responses and explicitly not framed it as if so - though really hard for keys in those cases just off public details. I could totally see those links being bad in either case though.

trim silo
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The emails are going to the generic contact address for Bellingcat, other organisations have received similar emails. We're pretty certain it's an attempt to get fact checkers to engage with them.

rain inlet
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That's clever, I can see many people/orgs that would take the bait

twin igloo
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How is their opsec? Any clues yet?

quiet pier
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Doing external OPSEC assessments like that isn't really, robust

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That's an actual cyclical framework the public does not really use correctly. Things we may see as an OPSEC failure, if going through a proper cycle, may not actually be relevant to cover.

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Eg specialists in webops who never leave the nation, their identity being exposed has relatively little operational impact. Someone who has a cover identity though yah you add a light wall there, still some nations they can go operational in though (eg Russia will dump people who got exposed to places like Belarus where the CI environment is relatively friendly)

rain inlet
tulip kiln
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It certainly sounds like they're talking about the same series of fakes.

tulip kiln
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For those who were in Book Club today.

rain inlet
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No Bellingcat impersonations yet, but it looks there's a new wave of Matryoshka videos targetting the German election https://bsky.app/profile/antibot4navalny.bsky.social/post/3lg6pr6n2ds2w

antibot4navalny | bot blocker | блокировщик ботов (@antibot4navalny.bsky.social)

Russian-state disinfo network Matryoshka has started to target the upcoming 🇩🇪Bundestag snap elections.

Today they posted 4 fake videos branded by reputable media names, all fearmongering with terrorism threats and calling for German voters to stay home on the election day. 1/

Bluesky ·
lean otter
rain inlet
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Well, this is an interesting one (video in the post): https://tfix.me/SchamanRahu/84908/en

Шаман Раху©️ (@[email protected])

Bellingcat: Epstein's files contain evidence that King Charles likely had an intimate relationship with Macron in 1994. As a teenager, Macron visited Britain on a school trip for outstanding students, where Charles and the young Macron became involved. This could have subsequently had a positive impact on Macron's career.

TFix ·
strong plover
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https://fxtwitter.com/uniquemongolia/status/2026350706043547889

not Bellingcat, but a rare ISW post

Roberto (@UniqueMongolia)

🇺🇸 American Institute for the Study of War: more than 70% of the weapons that ended up in the hands of the militants of the “New Generation Jalisco Cartel” are Western supplies to Ukraine, which ended up on the “black market”.
︀︀+ terrorists from 🇺🇦 foreign legion went there too!

**💬 9 🔁 56 ❤️ 113 👁️ 3.3K **

▶ Play video
FxTwitter ·
strong plover
fossil charm
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It's curious that this seems to be mostly a Russian disinformation tactic. I would expect that at this point we'd also see domestic actors jumping on that train. Anyone seen evidence of that yet?