Russian trolls spreading far-right conspiracy theories online have managed to dupe Donald Trump Jr. into thinking a fake post by Kid Rock was authentic.
In one of many attempts to meddle in the U.S. election, the Russian trolls created a fake account pretending to be the MAGA musician. A post from the account “KidRockOfficial” peddling a conspiracy theory about Ivermectin, a bogus Covid cure, and oil supplies caught the attention of the former president’s son.
Donald Trump Jr., who is allegedly friends with Kid Rock in real life, screenshotted the post from Gettr, and then posted it to Instagram with the caption “yup.”
The post is only a small part of a broader trend in which bad actors are exploiting social media apps such as Gab, Gettr and Truth Social, the platform created by former President Donald Trump, using “free-for-all” policies to their advantage.
The trolls have impersonated different American conservatives, cross-posting across the different platforms, and are reported to have spread pro-Russian propaganda, misinformation already popular among far-right groups, as well as conspiracy theories about Ukraine and bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
New report links accounts to Russia
These findings come from a new report by social media tracking firm Graphika and Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, which tracked a set of 35 accounts to the Newsroom for American European Based Citizens (NAEBC) — a fake outlet linked to Russian trolls. Between them, the accounts have amassed around 33,000 unique followers across Truth social, Gab and Gettr.
Researchers discovered that “KidRockOfficial” was identical to another account on Gab, which had already been flagged by the FBI in 2020 as being run by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm. It had simply resurfaced with the same handle on another platform.
This isn’t the first time posts on right-wing platforms have been linked back to…