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SouthFront
Type of site
News agency
Founded2015
Headquarters
Crimea
Area servedWorldwide
IndustryNews media
URLhttps://southfront.press/

SouthFront (sometimes written South Front) is a multilingual website registered in Russia and based in Crimea.[1] It has been accused of being an outlet for disinformation and propaganda under the control of the Russian government. For this reason, it has been sanctioned by the US Treasury and banned by social media platforms.

History

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In 2014, Radio Free Europe, reported: "The English-language Facebook page for South Front, which has slightly more than 11,500 subscribers, is a mix of carefully selected 'news' from the region -- usually from sources like LifeNews, a video news outlet believed to have ties to Russia's security services -- and anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western memes."[2] They described SouthFront as "a group supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine."[2]

Writing in 2019, the European Union's East StratCom Task Force analyzed site meta-data and reported, "South Front is registered in Russia, money donated to the site goes to Russia and the editor is named Anastasia. But the most compelling evidence for South Front’s being Russian is in the content...South Front is loyally relaying whatever suits the Kremlin, pretending not to be Russian."[3] Two days after that report appeared, SouthFront anonymized their videos, removing Russian text that had listed the name of their video editor as "Natasha."[4]

In April 2020, Facebook and Twitter deleted many pages and accounts they said were linked to "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" by Russian actors, mentioning South Front as having "pushed misleading articles, questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines."[5] According to EU vs Disinfo, however, both SouthFront and Crimea-based Newsfront were able to evade much of the Facebook effort.[6][7]

In February 2022, Meta (formerly Facebook, Inc.) took action against both SouthFront and NewsFront, for a new round of deceptive activity.[5] The Facebook report said that a network of fake accounts claiming to be people from Kyiv amplified content from "websites masquerading as independent news outlets, publishing claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state."[8]

In 2022, the US Treasury department said, "Although it previously focused on the 2020 U.S. presidential election, SouthFront has also spread information suggesting that Ukraine or NATO could use chemical weapons within the country with hopes to blame it on Russia."[9]

In August 2023, domain southfront.org "was took down (domain delegation was removed) on the international level without any advance notice and explanation."[10] The web then changed its domain to southfront.press.[11]

Disinformation and propaganda

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In 2016, Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro writing in Springer Link described SouthFront as "an allegedly citizen-sourced project that looks more like a suspicious information operation." Describing it as "a fascinating hybrid of revealingly detailed military intelligence and totally bogus stories," she said that the site's content centers on "the success of Russia's armed forces, and showing off Russia's weapons."[12]

In 2017, researchers at Oxford University's Internet Institute studied the collaboration of SouthFront with two US-based fascist fake news sites, Veterans Today and its sister site Veterans News Now.[13][14]

Philip N. Howard, one of the paper's coauthors, told McClatchy DC that the three websites underlay "an entire ecosystem of junk news about national security issues that is deliberately crafted for U.S. veterans and active military personnel...a complex blend of content with a Russian view of the world – wild rumors and conspiracies."[15] The Oxford researchers concluded that the three sites were more successful on Twitter than on Facebook, saying "on Twitter there are significant and persistent interactions between current and former military personnel and a broad network of Russia-focused accounts, conspiracy theory focused accounts, and European right-wing accounts."[13] SouthFront representatives responded to a Politico story about the Oxford study with an email saying they had no connection to Russia's government, adding that describing them as part of a Kremlin network was "contrary to the principles of freedom of speech and .. discriminatory against Russians."[14]

In 2020, the US State Department described SouthFront as part of Russia's "disinformation and propaganda ecosystem," where Russian state actors team with others whose connection to Russia was less clear, in order to get wide attention for their ideas. According to the State Department report, SouthFront "combines Kremlin talking points with detailed knowledge of military systems and ongoing conflicts and attempts to appeal to military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists."[16]

In 2021 and again in 2022, the US Treasury announced sanctions against SouthFront, calling it in 2021 "an online disinformation site registered in Russia that...attempts to appeal to military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists, all while going to great lengths to hide its connections to Russian intelligence."[17][9]

In April 2021, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec had tweeted 28 links to SouthFront between November 2019 and August 2020. In return, SouthFront promoted Posobiec as well, and cited his tweets in their posts.[18]

The 2022 US Treasury report alleged that SouthFront was sanctioned in part for being "owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the FSB" which is Russia's successor to Soviet Union's KGB.[9]

References

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  1. ^ Lomas, Natasha (28 February 2022). "As EU says it'll ban Russia's 'toxic media machine', social media firms face pressure to act". TechCrunch. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  2. ^ a b "Pro-Russian Separatist Supporters Seek Western Support On Social Media". Radio Free Europe. 29 June 2014. "South Front," a group supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The video, which begins with an unsubstantiated claim that "mass murder of civilians [by the Ukrainian Army] continues," is part of a growing effort by separatist supporters to expand their reach beyond Russian-speakers.
  3. ^ "South Front - Russia hiding being Russian". EU vs Disinfo. 8 April 2019. Retrieved 8 March 2022. South Front is registered in Russia, money, donated to the site goes to Russia and the editor is named Anastasia. But the most compelling evidence for South Front's being Russian is in the content. South Front is not an alternative website, challenging the mainstream, corporate media. South Front is loyally relaying whatever suits the Kremlin, pretending not to be Russian.
  4. ^ "Closet Russian site hides revealing metadata". EU vs Disinfo. 15 May 2019. Retrieved 11 March 2022. South Front is a Russian site. All this could be discovered through open resources for checking meta-data. Nothing secret, nothing strange. You don't need to be employing the EU Super Secret Super Mega Computer to perform a whois-search.
  5. ^ a b Collins, Ben; Kent, Jo Link (27 February 2022). "Facebook, Twitter remove disinformation accounts targeting Ukrainians". NBC News. Retrieved 27 February 2022. Facebook removed profiles related to News Front and South Front in 2020, and the company confirmed to NBC News that the new group shared connections to the accounts that were previously banned. Both websites have pushed misleading articles, questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines. The State Department identified the websites as Russian disinformation outlets in a 2020 report.
  6. ^ "All quiet on the Newsfront? Part 1". EU vs Disinfo. 20 April 2021. Retrieved 10 March 2022. Our findings show that following Facebook's takedown in April 2020, Facebook traffic to these sites has fallen somewhat. But this decline was part of a broader trend in falling social media traffic that did not neatly correspond to Facebook's actions in April. These sites maintained their overall levels of traffic with growth from direct traffic, such as users typing website addresses directly into their browsers or, perhaps more likely, sharing links with messaging apps and search engines....
  7. ^ "All quiet on the Newsfront? Part 2". EU vs Disinfo. 21 April 2021. Retrieved 10 March 2022. What stood out in our research was the fact that in 2020 the number of SouthFront links added to Wikipedia increased by 397%, and most links were added after the takedown (especially in the second half of the year). Most of the links added to Wikipedia concerned conflicts in the Middle East..
  8. ^ "Updates on Our Security Work in Ukraine". Meta. 27 February 2022. Retrieved 13 March 2022. This network used fake accounts and operated fictitious personas and brands across the internet — including on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, Odnoklassniki and VK — to appear more authentic in an apparent attempt to withstand scrutiny by platforms and researchers...They claimed to be based in Kyiv...This operation ran a handful of websites masquerading as independent news outlets, publishing claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state.
  9. ^ a b c "Treasury Sanctions Russians Bankrolling Putin and Russia-Backed Influence Actors". United States Department of the Treasury. 3 March 2022. Retrieved 6 March 2022. SouthFront is a disinformation site that receives taskings from the FSB. Following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, SouthFront sought to promote perceptions of voter fraud during the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle, and was designated pursuant to E.O. 13848, E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13382 on April 15, 2021, for having engaged in foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the FSB.
  10. ^ "SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence". Telegram. Retrieved 18 August 2023.
  11. ^ Article about old domain block and the new domain (Aug. 18, 2023)
  12. ^ Aro, Jessikka (24 May 2016). "An allegedly citizen-sourced project that looks more like a suspicious information operation". European View. 15 (1). Springer Link: 121–132. doi:10.1007/s12290-016-0395-5. S2CID 148543831.121-132&rft.date=2016-05-24&rft_id=info:doi/10.1007/s12290-016-0395-5&rft_id=https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:148543831#id-name=S2CID&rft.aulast=Aro&rft.aufirst=Jessikka&rft_id=https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs12290-016-0395-5&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:SouthFront" class="Z3988">
  13. ^ a b "Junk News on Military Affairs and National Security: Social Media Disinformation Campaigns Against US Military Personnel and Veterans" (PDF). Oxford Democracy and Technology Programme. 9 October 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2022. In late 2013 Veterans Today began publishing content from the government-charted Russian Academy of Sciences geopolitical journal New Eastern Outlook. At a similar time, its sister site, Veterans News Now, began publishing content from the Moscow think tank Strategic Culture Foundation. Similarly, the website South Front, was registered in Moscow in early 2015 and partnered with Veterans Today later that year.
  14. ^ a b Schreckinger, Ben (12 June 2017). "How Russia Targets the U.S. Military". Politico. Retrieved 10 March 2022. In October 2015, Veterans Today also partnered with a slickly designed, anonymously authored military affairs website called South Front that had been registered in Moscow that April just as Russia was ramping up its influence operations in response to Western sanctions.
  15. ^ "Russian propaganda engaged U.S. vets, troops on Twitter and Facebook, study finds". McClatchy DC. 9 October 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2022. The Oxford University study, which traced the reach of three websites with clear ties to the Russian government, adds a new dimension to revelations of a Kremlin cyber campaign aimed at undermining Americans' trust in democracy during last year's U.S. elections and helping Donald Trump win the presidency.
  16. ^ "GEC Special Report: August 2020: Pillars of Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem" (PDF). United States Department of State. 2020. Retrieved 8 March 2022. SouthFront: Analysis and Intelligence (a.k.a. SouthFront), is a multilingual online disinformation site registered in Russia that focuses on military and security issues. With flashy infographics, maps, and videos, SouthFront combines Kremlin talking points with detailed knowledge of military systems and ongoing conflicts. It attempts to appeal to military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists, all while going to great lengths to hide its connections to Russia.
  17. ^ "Treasury Escalates Sanctions Against the Russian Government's Attempts to Influence U.S. Elections". United States Department of the Treasury. 15 April 2021. Retrieved 27 February 2022. Russian Intelligence Services, namely the Federal Security Service (FSB)...directly operates disinformation outlets. SouthFront is an online disinformation site registered in Russia that receives taskings from the FSB. It attempts to appeal to military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists, all while going to great lengths to hide its connections to Russian intelligence. In the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, SouthFront sought to promote perceptions of voter fraud by publishing content alleging that such activity took place during the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle.
  18. ^ Hayden, Michael Edison (28 April 2021). "Jack Posobiec Links to Russian Intelligence-Backed Website". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 24 November 2022.

Further reading

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