Amid reports of Iran bolstering anti-Israel activists in the United States, disinformation researchers fear a similar phenomenon is unfolding across Canada.
Marcus Kolga founded DisinfoWatch in 2007 to monitor and expose state-sponsored attempts to hijack social media for malicious intents. Since the Hamas invasion of Israel last October, he’s seen a spike in such activity.
“Over the past nine months at DisinfoWatch, we’ve observed social media accounts that were previously posting aggressively anti-Ukrainian content, adding anti-Zionist content to their toxic mix,” Kolga told the National Post in an email. “We also know that Russian intelligence has been sponsoring antisemitic active measures and influence operations.”
There have been reports of foreign governments sowing divisions in the West in the wake of the wars in Ukraine and Israel. The U.S. director of national intelligence issued an official statement in July warning that the Islamic Republic of Iran was boosting anti-Israel protests online, and, five months earlier, France accused Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) — the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB — of a secret campaign to graffiti Paris with Jewish stars to plant fears of antisemitism.
Kolga pointed to a joint effort by American and Canadian intelligence agencies that unearthed nearly a thousand bot accounts designed to promote Russian government messaging as a glaring example of recent attempts to exploit Western democracies. Iran is a major prong in the network that is aligned with Russia, Kolga said.
“We’ve observed a clear crossover of pro-Kremlin/anti-Ukrainian and anti-Zionist/pro-Hamas narratives by prominent far-left and far-right influencers,” said Kolga, who is also a cyber expert with The Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
A new report from XPOZ, a company that uses artificial intelligence to combat disinformation, found that anti-Israel protests at McGill University were boosted by a social media influence campaign with potential ties to Iran.
“Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, McGill and its students have been the target of a coordinated, inauthentic and foreign narrative attack,” XPOZ wrote in a report obtained by the Post.
The company examined how social media users discussing the McGill encampment interacted online and found a disproportionate number of Farsi and Arabic commentators. These accounts amplified support for McGill’s student encampment, openly supported Hamas, and accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
In early July, campus security dismantled the school’s encampment.
“The campaign extensively utilized inauthentic profiles to amplify the discourse and broaden the reach of the narrative. Many of these profiles are inauthentic foreigners,” XPOZ wrote.
Experts warn Iran, others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada | National Post
Marcus Kolga founded DisinfoWatch in 2007 to monitor and expose state-sponsored attempts to hijack social media for malicious intents. Since the Hamas invasion of Israel last October, he’s seen a spike in such activity.
“Over the past nine months at DisinfoWatch, we’ve observed social media accounts that were previously posting aggressively anti-Ukrainian content, adding anti-Zionist content to their toxic mix,” Kolga told the National Post in an email. “We also know that Russian intelligence has been sponsoring antisemitic active measures and influence operations.”
There have been reports of foreign governments sowing divisions in the West in the wake of the wars in Ukraine and Israel. The U.S. director of national intelligence issued an official statement in July warning that the Islamic Republic of Iran was boosting anti-Israel protests online, and, five months earlier, France accused Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) — the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB — of a secret campaign to graffiti Paris with Jewish stars to plant fears of antisemitism.
Kolga pointed to a joint effort by American and Canadian intelligence agencies that unearthed nearly a thousand bot accounts designed to promote Russian government messaging as a glaring example of recent attempts to exploit Western democracies. Iran is a major prong in the network that is aligned with Russia, Kolga said.
“We’ve observed a clear crossover of pro-Kremlin/anti-Ukrainian and anti-Zionist/pro-Hamas narratives by prominent far-left and far-right influencers,” said Kolga, who is also a cyber expert with The Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
A new report from XPOZ, a company that uses artificial intelligence to combat disinformation, found that anti-Israel protests at McGill University were boosted by a social media influence campaign with potential ties to Iran.
“Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, McGill and its students have been the target of a coordinated, inauthentic and foreign narrative attack,” XPOZ wrote in a report obtained by the Post.
The company examined how social media users discussing the McGill encampment interacted online and found a disproportionate number of Farsi and Arabic commentators. These accounts amplified support for McGill’s student encampment, openly supported Hamas, and accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
In early July, campus security dismantled the school’s encampment.
“The campaign extensively utilized inauthentic profiles to amplify the discourse and broaden the reach of the narrative. Many of these profiles are inauthentic foreigners,” XPOZ wrote.
Experts warn Iran, others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada | National Post
