Why Russian Bots Are Replying to Influencers Posts

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[00:00:16] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, August 23rd. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal.

[00:00:23] When you get a new car, you expect that new car's smell.

[00:00:27] But to some buyers of Tesla's Cybertruck, it feels like their new pickups haven't been cleaned.

[00:00:34] We'll tell you what's going on.

[00:00:35] And then, fake accounts controlled by a Russian intelligence agency are trying to piggyback on the popularity of celebrities, politicians, and other influencers on X, formerly Twitter.

[00:00:47] They're doing this by replying to posts, according to a Wall Street Journal review of more than 1,000 posts.

[00:00:52] Our reporter Alexa Kors is going to join us to explain why these bots are using this low-quality, high-volume spam tactic and what it could mean for the upcoming U.S. election.

[00:01:07] But first, Tesla's Cybertrucks are rolling out of dealerships and into the hands of owners.

[00:01:13] But some say the vehicles are being handed over with a stainless steel exterior covered in fingerprints and smudges.

[00:01:21] Others report a hard-to-remove hazy coating on the windshield or dirt on the seats.

[00:01:27] So what's going on?

[00:01:29] Our reporter Ben Glickman is here to tell us.

[00:01:31] So Ben, what happened?

[00:01:33] Why were the Cybertrucks dirty?

[00:01:35] It's hard to say for sure.

[00:01:36] We've heard a couple of reasons.

[00:01:38] Some former employees at Tesla say that the service centers where they receive the vehicles to clean them and prepare them to give them over to customers were relatively short-staffed,

[00:01:49] that the vehicle was relatively difficult to clean because of its size and its odd stainless steel exterior.

[00:01:57] So multiple factors we're combining here to result in some less-than-pristine trucks being handed over.

[00:02:04] How easy or tough is it to clean these trucks?

[00:02:07] Well, that's sort of an ongoing question.

[00:02:10] There's a lot of debate over what to use to clean the truck.

[00:02:13] Obviously, it's not the same as what you would typically find on a painted car.

[00:02:17] For one, people don't know the exact right material to use.

[00:02:21] Even at the service centers in the early days of the rollout for the Cybertruck,

[00:02:25] employees there were receiving mixed guidance from the company, according to former employees.

[00:02:30] The company at one point said to use Dawn dish soap.

[00:02:34] Later on, people were using Barkeeper's Friend, which is like a tough-on-grime cleaner, and Windex.

[00:02:41] So there was generally a lot of confusion.

[00:02:43] I mean, how long can it take to clean some of the grime off of this car?

[00:02:48] One former employee told me it took at least two hours to clean the vehicle once they had sorted out a process.

[00:02:54] And that compares to about 45 minutes for Tesla's best-selling Model Y SUV.

[00:03:01] So it turns out kind of a while.

[00:03:03] And obviously, the other aspect here is that when there are a lot of Cybertrucks being delivered all at once to these delivery centers,

[00:03:10] you sort of have a pileup where they have to work quickly to get through all the Cybertrucks,

[00:03:14] but they're complicated to clean and they take time.

[00:03:18] So those two forces are kind of working against each other.

[00:03:21] Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that.

[00:03:22] The Cybertruck went on sale late last year, and it's had this bumpy launch disrupted by manufacturing challenges, recalls, and other delays.

[00:03:30] So what has that rush to get these Cybertrucks to consumers meant for the staff at delivery centers?

[00:03:37] A lot of people I spoke to had reserved their trucks online with their Tesla accounts all the way back in 2019.

[00:03:43] Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, at one point said the company had upwards of 1 million reservations for Cybertrucks.

[00:03:50] So clearly there was strong demand for the truck, and they're trying to match that.

[00:03:56] But the result for delivery centers on the ground is that they're dealing with a lot of deliveries happening all at once in some cases.

[00:04:04] And that in some cases has left them sort of short-staffed or shorthanded.

[00:04:09] We should note that many Cybertruck owners have also said their trucks arrived clean,

[00:04:14] or if they had problems, they were resolved quickly.

[00:04:17] Has Tesla commented at all on this?

[00:04:20] Tesla did not respond to our request for comment.

[00:04:22] But yeah, you're absolutely right.

[00:04:24] It's important to note that the experiences of people getting Cybertrucks varied pretty significantly by delivery center and when they picked up their truck.

[00:04:33] Certain delivery centers might have had fewer deliveries that day, so they had more time to detail the truck.

[00:04:39] All right, that was our reporter, Ben Glickman.

[00:04:41] Coming up, Russian trolls are ramping up their activities on social media.

[00:04:46] Again.

[00:04:47] And this time they seem desperate for influencers to notice them.

[00:04:52] What could that mean for November's U.S. election?

[00:04:55] We'll tell you after the break.

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[00:05:38] New data shared with the WSJ by researchers from Clemson University offer an exclusive look at how the Russian government is positioning its online influence armies ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

[00:05:52] Researchers used a list of usernames for nearly 1,000 X accounts tied to a bot farm that the U.S. Justice Department said was operated by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB.

[00:06:05] X had removed virtually all of those accounts by the time the DOJ flagged them.

[00:06:10] But the research offers insight into how foreign influence campaigns could impact the 2024 election.

[00:06:17] Here to tell us more is our reporter, Alexa Kors.

[00:06:20] So, Alexa, how did you get interested in this story?

[00:06:23] I started looking into this last month when the Justice Department came out and said,

[00:06:28] we found this Russian network of fake accounts on X and we helped take it down.

[00:06:33] And so this network had been like a bunch of totally fake accounts, like one was purporting to be a guy in Minneapolis.

[00:06:41] And they were tweeting a lot, trying to push Russian narratives about the war in Ukraine, that kind of thing.

[00:06:46] And one really interesting tactic we saw is that these fake accounts were relying a lot on replying to much more famous influencers.

[00:06:55] And when we spoke to researchers about this, what they said was this shows how Russia is increasingly relying on trying to piggyback off the reply section, piggyback off influencers.

[00:07:08] So they can have a small account, but they can try to get attention by just being in the conversation, trying to engage with people with much bigger followings.

[00:07:18] So what influencers are they trying to interact with and how are they going about doing that?

[00:07:23] So they tweeted at a lot of famous Americans, generally people in politics and media.

[00:07:29] Some examples are Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., even President Joe Biden.

[00:07:36] And it's important to note that we didn't see any sign of these famous people engaging back.

[00:07:41] What kinds of things were they tweeting?

[00:07:43] So for example, they tweeted over and over again, claiming that the Ukrainian president wants to force Hungarians to fight in the war against Russia.

[00:07:56] And basically just trying to like sow division or spread negative claims about the war in Ukraine.

[00:08:02] What is X doing to stop the bots from spreading disinformation?

[00:08:05] So Musk actually posted on X about this, and he said the Justice Department helped, but that X was also suspending these accounts.

[00:08:14] Every social media platform deals with fake accounts.

[00:08:18] But Musk, when he bought Twitter, he thought Twitter's content moderation had gone too far.

[00:08:23] And he also said he had to cut a lot of staff and just cut a lot of costs due to turmoil with the business.

[00:08:30] And former employees have told me that those cuts really affected the resources Twitter 2.0 now had to go after foreign influence operations.

[00:08:41] X declined to comment for this story.

[00:08:44] They do say they have policies that prohibit these kind of deceptive and misleading activities.

[00:08:51] How has this tactic of going after, you know, influencers and having just lots of volume, how has that changed from past influence campaigns?

[00:09:00] Russia has been waging influence operations on social media for a long time now.

[00:09:05] And they've tried using these kind of low quality accounts before.

[00:09:10] But we're all generally smarter now, right?

[00:09:13] And it's harder for Russia to, you know, spend a year creating a fake account that could get tons of followers and no one would suspect anything.

[00:09:21] You'd think probably a researcher at least would notice it somewhere.

[00:09:24] Or maybe the government, like, happened here.

[00:09:27] So it makes a lot of sense that we're seeing now Russia basically say, let me rely more on just creating a bunch of accounts.

[00:09:35] Be more spammy.

[00:09:37] It doesn't matter if one gets suspended because I have a ton of accounts right behind.

[00:09:40] So it's a bigger part of the playbook now.

[00:09:43] What do experts say can be done or should be done to stop foreign influence operations this election season?

[00:09:49] Well, this is a really hard thing to stop.

[00:09:52] And with AI, too, it's much easier to do this kind of thing.

[00:09:56] And we saw that with this network, too.

[00:09:58] So a lot of the messaging from U.S. officials has been about public awareness, like telling people foreign adversaries have been trying to do this for years now.

[00:10:09] Let's remember that they're trying to sow division and chaos.

[00:10:13] And let's try to be smarter about what we see online.

[00:10:16] We're talking mostly about Russia, but Iran is also waging an online influence campaign, according to officials.

[00:10:24] Can you tell us about that?

[00:10:25] U.S. officials have been briefing reporters about foreign influence efforts.

[00:10:29] And when it comes to Iran, officials have said that Iran wants former President Trump to lose his reelection bid.

[00:10:39] And Iran has been in the news lately related to the hacking of some of the Trump campaign's internal communications.

[00:10:48] And actually, U.S. officials have come out and publicly said they think Iran was indeed behind that hack.

[00:10:55] What have Russia and Iran said about these claims?

[00:10:58] Both countries have denied trying to interfere in U.S. elections.

[00:11:03] And one other thing to note is that U.S. officials have said that Russia's goals differ from what they think Iran is trying to do here.

[00:11:11] They think Russia wants to boost Trump, actually.

[00:11:14] That was our reporter, Alexa Kors.

[00:11:17] And that's it for Tech News Briefing.

[00:11:19] Today's show was produced by Julie Chang.

[00:11:21] I'm your host, Zoe Thomas.

[00:11:23] We had additional support this week from Melanie Roy.

[00:11:26] Jessica Fenton and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music.

[00:11:29] Our supervising producer is Catherine Millsop.

[00:11:31] Our development producer is Aisha Al-Muslim.

[00:11:34] Scott Salloway and Chris Dinsley are the deputy editors.

[00:11:37] And Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio.

[00:11:40] We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute.

[00:11:44] Thanks for listening.