European voters are targeted by thousands of fake accounts and extreme political narratives. By networks that are run from outside Europe, our HEIO research shows.
That was the main concern during the “Behind The Influence” conference of two days in Brussels last week.
This isn’t “fake news” anymore
Our HEIO observatory has shown that Foreign information manipulation (FIMI) has moved past the isolated fake news campaign. Today’s manipulation campaigns are networks and are coordinated across platforms. They use deceptive design and the algorithms themselves to exploit social divisions, target elections and steer public debate.
Platforms are facilitators
You can’t talk about influence operations without talking about the platforms they run on. Platforms like to present themselves as passive hosts. But they’re not.
Research shows that their enforcement is inconsistent and usually comes after the fact. A post gets removed, but the ecosystem keeps running. The algorithms and design that let these networks scale aren’t accidents. They’re deliberate choices by the designers of the platforms and part of a bigger economy.
So the real question is accountability. What responsibility do platforms carry for building environments where this manipulation works at scale?
And what kind of monitoring is enough? It can’t be a one-off snapshot. We need to see patterns, networks, and how they shift over time.
From observations to disruption
Now the hard part. Observing influence isn’t enough for us. We have to stop it.
At the conference I saw the European launch of Alliance4Europe’s DISRUPT Toolkit. This is a toolkit with practical steps to build evidence, disrupt threats and limit harm. The challenge now is capacity. Not just spotting networks and understanding their tactics, but knowing where intervention actually makes a difference.
Nobody does that alone. It takes researchers, journalists, civil society and policymakers working together. We need a community that counters false narratives and produces evidence that leads to action. That’s exactly what the Counter Disinformation Network brings together, and why we are happy to be a part of it as Post-X Society and Hybrid Election Integrity Observatory.
On 28 and 29 September Zofia Piętka-Danilewicz attended the Counter Disinformation Network Annual Conference, “Behind the Influence”, in Brussels, followed by the European Parliament event “Gaming the Algorithm, Targeting Democracy: How Large-Scale Networks Operating from outside Europe Are Exploiting X to Manipulate European Election Information Spaces”.