Since Elon Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter (now X) last year, the billionaire has been determined to wipe out bots and spammy accounts. Things haven’t gone smoothly. Amid the chaos, in recent weeks Russian trolls have jumped on one of Musk’s own posts and used it to push pro-Kremlin messaging, a new analysis shows.
At the start of October, Musk used his platform to mock Ukrainian president Vlodymr Zelensky with a nine-year-old meme. “When it’s been five minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid,” says the text above the “Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class” meme, which the X owner posted to his 160 million followers. The original image shows a teenage schoolboy visibly agitated while sitting in class next to a girl. Musk’s version swapped in Zelensky’s face. Ukrainians hit back at Musk, accusing him of trolling and posting Russian propaganda.
Now analysis by a volunteer group of researchers who track Russian-language information operations on X says Russian trolls flocked to Musk’s post and news accounts that reported on his meme. “The Zelensky tweet from Musk seems to be the most commented by Kremlin trolls over nearly three months,” says Antibot4Navalny, the anonymous group of volunteers behind the findings.
In the days after the post, around 160 inauthentic accounts pushing pro-Russian messaging sent some 400 posts praising Musk as a “Russian patriot” and photoshopping him into Russian military uniforms, according to the group. They say the main messaging can be summarized, in part, as “Comrade Musk supports Russia.”
Three independent experts, including one former disinformation researcher at Twitter, reviewed the findings from Antibot4Navalny and concluded that the accounts praising Musk and pushing Russian narratives are likely to be part of a coordinated campaign. They say that while there was a small number of accounts pushing the messaging—the post has 93 million views—the targeting may show the accounts testing their messaging and tactics.
The X press office did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, which included a sample of the accounts identified by the Antibot4Navalny researchers. “Busy now, please check back later,” its automated response says.
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