You damn, dirty apes Facebook bans a network of accounts coordinated from Russia that spread disinformation about Western coronavirus vaccines in multiple languages
Dr. Zaius and Charlton Heston first battled for the fate of mankind more than half a century ago, but the original Planet of the Apes made something of a comeback in 2021, albeit mangled by online anti-vaxxer propaganda. In part at least, that is one of the revelations in Facebook’s latest report on disinformation. Meduza breaks down how a Russia-linked ad agency recycled a monkey meme for a juvenile but apparently serious campaign against the West’s coronavirus vaccines.
In its July 2021 “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report,” Facebook announced that it banned 63 Facebook accounts and 243 Instagram accounts for spreading disinformation about Western coronavirus vaccines. The flagged content included various memes about the supposed dangers of COVID-19 shots, especially AstraZeneca, and numerous comments posted elsewhere in English, Hindi, Spanish, and Portuguese.
The disinformation included images implying that a COVID-19 inoculation will turn you into a primate. For example, there was an image from the original “Planet of the Apes” film with the caption: “Cmon, Walter. Don’t be afraid. AstraZeneca is a safe vaccine — we’ve already been vaccinated ourselves.”
“Our investigation found links between this campaign and Fazze, a subsidiary of a UK-registered marketing firm, whose operations were primarily conducted from Russia. Fazze is now banned from our platform,” Facebook explained in its report.
The “monkey vaccine” memes from Fazze bear a striking resemblance to images included in a broadcast of Dmitry Kiselyov’s weekly news program on Russian state television on September 13, 2020, where the host warned that AstraZeneca is inherently more dangerous to patients because it was designed using a monkey-adenovirus vector, not a human adenovirus.
In October 2020, British journalists drew attention to Kiselyov’s efforts to sow distrust in AstraZeneca and linked the broadcast to a campaign by certain online groups with ties to Russia who were spreading similar fake news and memes in the West and in “countries where Russia wants to sell its own Sputnik V vaccine,” namely in India and Brazil.
Despite the rhetoric on state television, Kremlin officials have insisted that the Russian government played no role in any campaign to discredit Western vaccines, including AstraZeneca. “Russia doesn’t misinform anyone. Russia speaks proudly of its own successes, and Russia reports its successes in the field of the world’s first registered [coronavirus] vaccine, the effectiveness of which has been proved many times over,” Vladimir Putin’s press secretary told journalists in October 2020.
According to Facebook’s data, the “monkey vaccine” memes peaked late in 2020, in November and December, before nosediving in January 2021, right after officials in Argentina, India, and Brazil approved the emergency use of AstraZeneca.
Facebook’s analysts say this campaign’s impact was minimal: most posts attracted zero likes and the most popular post of all got just five likes. Five months later, however, the same network of accounts launched a second wave of content, this time taking aim at Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, Facebook says.
The second time around, the advertising agency Fazze decided to hire popular YouTubers. When some of those online influencers in France, Germany, and elsewhere turned around and told the public about a strange, lucrative offer from an anonymous client to spread claims about the supposed fatal risks of Western vaccines, the story reached journalists quickly.
In May 2021, Meduza and other news outlets discovered that the Fazze company was a business subdivision of a Russian firm called Adnow Technologies. In August 2021, the BBC finally reached one of two directors of AdNow’s British arm: a man living in Durham named Ewan Tolladay. In light of the scandal, Tolladay explained, “We are doing the responsible thing and shutting down AdNow here in the UK.” It’s curtains for Fazze, as well, he added.
But who was really behind this disinformation campaign? Journalists at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in May 2021 that a woman named Yulia Serebryanskaya managed several Russian legal entities connected to Adnow. According to one of her own websites, Serebryanskaya headed the Central Executive Committee’s Political Advertising Department for the ruling political party United Russia.
Serebryanskaya’s role remains unclear, however, and everyone working at Fazze and Adnow promptly deleted themselves from all social networks, after journalists caught wind of their operation, earlier this year. To this day, not a single manager from these companies (except Ewan Tolladay) has spoken to reporters.
According to Facebook’s report, each wave of anti-vaxxer propaganda targeted a specific coronavirus drug (AstraZeneca and then Pfizer), and both campaigns focused on audiences in countries just as local authorities were reviewing “expedited approval pathways” for the vaccines.
Story by Alexey Kovalev
Abridged translation by Kevin Rothrock