Profiting from Propaganda: How Meta Benefits from Pro-Kremlin Election Meddling Ads in Moldova
By Aleksandra Atanasova and Andrei Rusu
Co-published with WatchDog.md: a pro-Kremlin campaign paid Meta about EUR 300,000 over 18 months, nearly a quarter of Moldova's political ad spend since August 2020, running 150+ inauthentic pages with disinformation and deepfakes ahead of Moldova's elections while Meta failed to dismantle the network.
Executive summary
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Reset Tech and the Moldovan watchdog WatchDog.md examined pro-Kremlin political advertising on Meta in the run-up to Moldova's elections.
They found a coordinated campaign that paid Meta roughly EUR 300,000 over 18 months, close to a quarter of all political ad spend in Moldova since August 2020, while running more than 150 inauthentic pages that pushed disinformation and deepfakes. Despite the scale and the sanctioned, foreign-influence character of the operation, Meta failed to take the network down.
The report argues that Meta profits directly from election-meddling advertising in vulnerable democracies and calls for far stronger scrutiny of political-ad money flows and advertiser identity.
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