>Russian-linked Doppelganger operations have systematically cloned major media infrastructure (Reuters, The Washington Post, Fox News) using lookalike domains that replicate visual design and URL structure closely enough to pass casual inspection. This purpose-built impersonation infrastructure is supported by fake personas, AI-assisted content, and paid amplification across mainstream social platforms.

Are there any live examples out there? Similar to how I like to look at scam/phishing emails to see how they work, I'm interested in seeing how sophisticated these are/are not.

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markerz 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Took me a bit of digging but I found this screenshot of fox-news.in: https://urlscan.io/result/50f1da5b-5b1f-417c-91b8-8690638a6e...

That URL is linked from https://assets.recordedfuture.com/insikt-report-pdfs/2023/ta...

Which is linked from https://www.recordedfuture.com/research/russian-influence-ne...

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jruohonen an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Similar to how I like to look at scam/phishing emails to see how they work, I'm interested in seeing how sophisticated these are/are not.

https://edmo.eu/publications/ai-political-influencers-the-ne...

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stinkbeetle an hour ago | parent [-]

Are there any links to any of these Russian doppelganger propaganda sites? That seemed to just be a story about "influencers" and their AI slop.

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mikeyouse 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

They were largely taken down after Biden-admin actions in 2024 -- a contemporaneous story about some:

https://dfrlab.org/2024/09/18/doppelganger-us-election/

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jruohonen an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It is the world wide web so yes there should be plenty of links to those, but I do not have them.

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Brendinooo an hour ago | parent [-]

I did do some searching and any link I found was already dead (hence me asking here!), so it's not really helpful to say "there should be plenty of links".

	▲	reddozen 9 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Disinformation moved from page rank to the "feed" in 2018 when Douyin bought (read: acquired copyright they originally stole) Musically and rebranded to TikTok. Why does no one remember any of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news_websites_in_the_Unit...
	▲	petre 23 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They set up new ones, don't worry. And the propaganda is largely on brain rotting social media like tiktok and twitterx.

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reddozen 27 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

MAGAts have memory holed it but Hillary Clinton originally started using "Fake News" in the 2016 presidential election to describe websites[0] that were entirely fake, made to mimic a real news site spreading Russian disinformation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news_websites_in_the_Unit...