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Just last year, such attempts were far less sophisticated. But the technology has gotten much better in a short time, notably in the ability to create AI-generated images or clone voices, said analyst Libby Lange of the misinformation tracking company Graphika.“It’s just such a leap forward in scary ways from where we were before,” Lange said. “If everything could be fake … there’s really no sense of ground truth.”

A report from online disinformation tracker Graphika backed up Meta’s findings, saying Russia’s own restrictions on its citizens' use of Facebook and Instagram would also have had an effect. Graphika found that by late August, posting volumes were down 43% and engagement levels had fallen 80% compared to the same day a year earlier. Since then, there’s been little rise or fall in activity.

Vladimir Barash, Graphika’s chief scientist, said the pattern of interference was “strategically similar” to troll activity targeting the vast anti-Putin protests of 2011 and 2012, with sock-puppet accounts “similarly trying to hijack the conversation, sometimes succeeding.”

Melanie Smith, head of analysis at Graphika, who researches online movements and disinformation, says the rumours are typical of an "anti-establishment conspiracy theory".

A report evaluating Twitter’s Jan. 11 enforcement action against QAnon accounts, released by network analysis firm Graphika on Friday, underscores the power mainstream social media sites have to squelch hateful, violent and conspiratorial conversation when they choose to. Graphika found that more than 60 percent of a densely clustered network of nearly 14,000 QAnon accounts are now inactive.

“It is possible that the intention was to further polarize America’s political landscape by affirming each side’s view of the other, but in that case, it is strange that the operation paid no attention to more progressive groups and candidates, such as senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren,” Graphika, a social media monitoring group, said in a report analyzing the campaign.

Some disinformation groups go for low volume, high impact. Others go for the opposite. The latter is the case with Russian-linked operators who, in late 2019, infamously leaked documents on trade discussions between the U.S. and the UK, according to a new report from researchers at Graphika. 

The Russian network used dozens of fake personas to post pro-Kremlin and anti-Western messages on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and news websites. It focused primarily on Ukraine, but some of Russia's neighbouring countries, such as Moldova, the Baltic states and Turkey, were also targeted. A few accounts also focused on Germany and the UK, but "left little trace of online activity", according to Graphika, a social media analytics firm.

The witnesses for the Nov. 13 hearing—entitled “Hijacking our Heroes: Exploiting Veterans through Disinformation on Social Media"—will include Facebook’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher, Twitter’s Public Policy Manager Kevin Kane, Graphika’s Science Director Vladimir Barash and Vietnam Veterans of America’s Chief Investigator and Associate Director of Policy and Government Affairs Kristofer Goldsmith.

One of the campaigns focused more on the 2020 election. In that campaign, 50 accounts linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency — a Kremlin-backed professional troll farm — targeted candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, according to an analysis from Graphika, a social media research firm. Roughly half of those accounts claimed to be based in swing states. 

Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, a company that specializes in analyzing social media, said the growing use of internet disinformation is concerning for the 2020 United States election. A mix of domestic and foreign groups, operating autonomously or with loose ties to a government, are building from the methods used by Russia in the last presidential election, making it difficult for the platforms to police, he said.

A report, by an Oxford University team working with analytical firm Graphika, said Russian trolls urged African-Americans to boycott the 2016 election or to follow wrong voting procedures, while also encouraging right-wing voters to be more confrontational.

Russia's online disinformation campaign included messaging that supported 2016 Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, according to a new report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A report submitted to a Senate committee about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election says that social media companies made misleading or evasive claims about whether the efforts tried to discourage voting or targeted African-Americans on their platforms.

Russian propaganda had about 187 million engagements on Instagram, reaching at least 20 million users, and 76.5 million engagements on Facebook, reaching 126 million people. Approximately 1.4 million people engaged with tweets associated with the Internet Research Agency.