The fake Twitter account of “Marina Ovsyannikova” | Hacker News Reader

The fake Twitter account of “Marina Ovsyannikova”

davidallengreen.com

139 pointsesquivalience82 comments

I wish the article was more clear about what was real and what was fake.

In case anyone still isn't sure: Marina Ovsyannikova did get on Russian state video, protesting against the war in Ukraine [1]. She has been detained [2]. Afterwards someone created a fake Twitter account @MarinaOvsyy , impersonating her.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Anti-war_p... .

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova#Aftermath

> It was reported that Ovsyannikova pleaded guilty to flouting the law and was fined ₽30,000 or $280.

https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/150376685026146713...

> A Moscow court fined Marina #Ovsyannikova, who burst onto primetime Russian news last night with an anti-war poster, 30,000 rubles.

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1503771147376209923

> First comments from Ovsyannikova: 14-hour interrogation, denied her access to lawyers, she’ll talk more tomorrow after some sleep. She speaks English at the end of this video.

Additional reporting: https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-court-fines-woman-anti...

Meanwhile Navalny just got an extra 13 years.

Thanks, it really wasn't clear that the accusation was limited to the twitter account after reading it. I came away with the opposite impression.

Thanks for the feedback. The part that is fake is actually relatively small. Given that, I'm surprised to see this article on the front page; perhaps it's popular partly because readers are misunderstanding it.

I thought it was perfectly clear.

Also, it's not beyond the realm of possibilities that anti-russian people created this fake pro-russia account in order to "expose" it and therefore taint any and all pro-russia news/propaganda.

I remember they did something like this in the alabama race a few years ago.

Of course, the cycle is endless... and why the first casualty in war is the truth.

Twitter is an incredibly malleable medium - all sorts of people will 'jump to the head of any parade' for self attention, new followers etc etc and various spooky and state actors are extremely busy promoting, trolling or undermining tweets. It's a fascinating place and it's often not hard to figure out who are trolls, bots and fake accounts, but sometimes you really have to think and look at surrounding activities.

Right. The 99% of people who don't fall for it effectively have no vote in the algo. The 1% of people who do, drive it into the eyeballs of more and more people.

Now, of course, you can correctly argue that all of the "valid" content is believed by more people, and therefore gets more eyeballs. But then again, me tweeting about my breakfast isn't as inherently interesting as this newsworthy woman's tweets are (would be?)

Adding to your comment how easy it is to buy fake followers (or more controversially state actors adding them)and therefore credibility - a lot of people still think someone with a huge twitter 'following' are therefore more credible. Brand marketers know all about this

Note: the blog post was published today at 13:00 UTC, and at that time, noted that the account seemed to have been suspended. However, as of 15:30 UTC, someone else has taken over the "@MarinaOvsyy" handle and is even impersonating the previous impersonator's tweets.

The blog post's screencap of @MarinaOvsyy: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5qPFRXwBMG7sw?format=jpg&name=...

A current screencap of @MarinaOvsyy; besides the obviously different account (different join date, follower count, etc). note the difference in the 2nd most recent tweet, which is an attempt to copy the 2nd latest tweet in the previous faker: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN5p1kwWYAM4Y2D?format=jpg&name=...

Social media and Twitter is general is filled with fake accounts and trends. It's almost like bombarded with fake accounts these days. This is the case at least here in India.

Twitter has been compromised by a Sybil attack[0] many times. They tried to stop people registering sockpuppet accounts en masse by forcing phone verification, but phone numbers are trivial to acquire with things like Twilio and other services, so it's a minor hiccup for the troll farm operators.

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

I thought it was relatively easy to block off VoIP numbers.

So the account is fake but the person and the incident are real? Is that the claim here or is everything fake? What is the author asking not to take at face value?

I read the article and I’m still confused.

The account is/was impersonating a real person[0]. It happens on Twitter with some regularity, people will make fake accounts for people in the news, and with a similar regularity occasionally get picked up as real by media figures who should know better.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/15/russia-tv-prot...

Ah! Ok. Thanks!

> Twitter, of course, is blocked in Russia – and although she could be using a VPN, there would be no point in her doing that if she was tweeting under her own name.

I'm not sure I follow, if Twitter is blocked it doesn't matter what name you use.

Think.

It’s not blocked for the authorities who are monitoring twitter.

Read the text again. It said there would be no reason to use a VPN when posting under your real name. It also states Twitter is blocked and you can only access it using VPN.

Don't you see that these two sentences makes no sense? Because one very obvious reason to use a VPN even when posting under your real name would be that this is the only way to do it.

I am not saying that the account is real or fake, just saying that there is an obvious logical error in this specific part.

Your reply makes no sense to me and i agree with the GP

Ok, twitter is blocked for normal Russians. Why would she post there? Using her real name which the authorities in Russia could easily trace back to her and level increased punishment than what she is already in for?

The only logical sense that comment could make is to imply that the post is a 4d chess propaganda maneuvering by the very same people who are blocking Twitter in Russia.

This is the result of lazy, emotional, reactionary, populist journalism that doesn't do the work required to unearth new information, which is what real journalism is all about. Finding new relevant data is hard. Throwing up online is easy.

Can someone explain what's going on here?

It appears (from what I can tell in this article):

1. There is a real woman who got on Russian state video denouncing the war

2. She made a video ahead of time saying she was going to do it

3. She was detained

4. Someone made an account impersonating her

5. The impersonating account then spoke “as her”, continuing to say things denouncing the war.

This guy is saying that it was easy to tell that it was an impersonation.

And hopefully this isn't a diversion to try discredit everything she really did do...

I am surprised that the only punishment that Marina Ovsyannikova gets is less than $300 penalty. And then she was released.

It seems increasingly plausible that this event was staged by those in power who want to stop the war.

She’s been fined for the video. Her TV appearance is still under investigation and will be subject to a separate court hearing.

Anybody has news confirming she's still alive ?

According to Meduza she's been fined 30k rubles (~€250)

https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1503766710863728647?t=7...

Sounds like Twitter can be as dangerous as real war.

It's really too bad that authenticating user profiles is impossible. Therefore the socials (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok) have no agency and consequently are forced to serve as unwitting [1] accelerants for propaganda and disinformation.

Because reasons.

[1] Or perhaps just witless?

More seriously, I wonder if the Freedom Speeches™ trolls also support internet voting. Darn it. I've been remiss in not branding (faith-based) electronic voting. Which I now christen Freedom Votes™.

I regret the oversight.

Account maybe fake but the contents aligns with what she is doing, at it from a misinformation perspective, not a big red flag

It aligns with what she is doing right now. Who knows who is behind it or what their motivations are, though.

Seems you took your comment back, allright. (Before I wrote: Have a read at the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start to be helpful and kind with your comments. Thanks.)

Here is a take on the incident itself which I think is worth a look: https://twitter.com/grishchukroma/status/1503500141159985157

In short: This woman is an editor for the Russian propaganda machine, and it's very likely this was staged/is itself more propaganda aimed at the west.

This sounds like an extremely uncharitable interpretation of what (if genuine) is a very brave thing to do.

For some further information: Marina Ovsyannikova has been charged with "organizing an unauthorized public event" [0]. The punishment can be a fine, community service or up to 10 days in jail.

So she seems to not be charged with the new law that could land her 15 years in prison.

Corroboration of the theory that it was staged? Or a sign that Russia is slowly allowing more people to speak out against the war? Or something completely different? I truly do not know what to believe these days.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60749279

That honestly seems a little convoluted as a theory. Like a double-double-doublecross in some spy movie, IMO real life is usually more straightforward.

Right. Most conspiracies are pretty dumb, because people are dumb.

Russia's MO is basically to tell absurd lies and whine about American hypocrisy, both through official channels and unofficially online. That's it. If you were reading the comment sections of newspaper articles during the annexation of Crimea, you probably remember the flood of posts expressing bizarre pro-Russian views which were entirely inconsistent with any significant Western political alignment.

This stuff is pretty easy to spot and acknowledge for what it is. Anything beyond that I would generally take as people's honest opinions.

Yep. Definitely not propaganda. Doesn't serve their purposes.

and it's very likely this was staged

That's a huge leap that doesn't really follow from any of the available facts.

> and it's very likely this was staged/is itself more propaganda aimed at the west.

Could you please explain your reasoning here? Why do you think this is the case? What does Russia have to gain?

The tweet author unfortunately puts carriage in front of the horse - not by any evil will, it is just a natural mistake for non-Russians observing the situation from outside.

"In video she talks about "brother nations" of Russia and Ukraine. This is core narrative of Russian propaganda that is used as explanation of occupation of Ukraine: "We are brothers and we should live in one country"."

It isn't just a core narrative of the propaganda. It is a deep seated in Russian psyche myth hijacked by the propaganda. Thus pretty much any Russian, even the best of the best like this woman would usually display it.

Mixed with another core myth of "Great Russia" it becomes the "Big brother" surrounded by "Little brothers". Like Ukrainians in recent TV discussion about whether to allow "good Russians" to come to Ukraine described it as "an infection what every, even good intentioned, Russian carry".

"she says that only Putin is responsible for war. It's false statement: most of Russian society support Putin, occupation and war in Ukraine."

That is just a tall order right now for any Russian there. Just voicing that way against Putin is the act of unmeasurable courage. It is already big pain to recognize it internally yourself, let alone to tell all those mostly good, at least in everyday life, people, your friends and colleagues, that they are perpetrators and supporters of genocidal war - while true, that would be shot nowhere, just costing a moral support by those people which is really important when you're going against Putin.

I don't follow how this could be true, as normal Russian viewers would have seen a "we started a war" narrative that is essentially blocked everywhere else. I.e. there is a lot to lose, and also, everyone in the west knows there are lots of "good" Russians. They just need to see more of these sorts of messages, so if the Kremlin arranged this - win!

Even if true, this still backfires. While this got the headlines everywhere, there is no significant pro-russian sentiment as a result, at least on the surface. So it's either an elites conflict getting from under the rug or an actual protest. As a Ukrainian, I am fine with both.

OR that there are people who have personal opinions about the war who try to do what they think is right... and then there are sleazy Ukrainians politicians who are worried that the western population might see Russians as humans.

I agree with your first sentence.

The "sleazy Ukrainian politician" statement however is quite an accusation, especially considering that the Ukrainian president commended her and all other brave Russians who protest and speak up.

Are you speaking about any politician in particular?

Source: https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/zelenskyy...

Interesting point of view. Thanks for sharing. It does seem plausible.

Isn’t fake news detection a solved problem with NLP? Language and grammar detection was already making good progress almost a decade ago. If it works in the field of terrorism and social engineering, that it is not yet wielded for fake news seems to be reluctance on the part of social media entities. Having said that.. I am not a technical person..this is just a layman point of view.

How would language and grammar detection aid in fake news detection? What makes news "fake" generally involves dimensions far more complex than grammar.

Well if I ever start following the textbook rules about the Oxford comma and splint infinitives, that's when you'll know I've been replaced with a Russian bot.

In seriousness, language/grammar use analysis could potentially provide a hint that the person behind a user account has been replaced by another writer.

I did not say that language and grammar detection would help in fake news detection. What I meant was shouldn’t fake news detection be the next logical step after language and grammar detection.

I found this(haven’t read it) : https://soe.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/GSET_2...

(ETA: I got lost in the wilderness after page 3.)

No this is nonsense. You could, at best, train a model to either identify specific fake news claims; or perhaps train it to identify the style of one particular fake news source. But you will never create a model that can identify novel claims from an author you don't have a strong reason to associate with fake/genuine news beforehand.

How could that possibly work? Not even holmes was so bold in his claims of linguistic analysis.

It’s not entirely nonsense. Not all fake news is social engineering but almost all social engineering has some ‘fake news’ component.

If you can use NLP for detecting social engineering scams, it can also be used to detect fake news. There will likely be false positives. But that’s because the net would be wide.

No it is absolutely nonsense. You cannot possibly use NLP to evaluate novel claims and evaluate them for truthfulness. The NLP model couldn't know that. Social engineering is detectable because it usually includes something like a request for your personal information.

A novel fake news claim would not look anything like prior fake news claims. You'll have false positives, yes. You'll also have false negatives. Probably a lot of them.

A generic fake news detector is very different from, say, a detector of claims that Ukraine is a nazi state. The latter is easy to detect.

What is a false negative when it comes to fake news claim?

I agree that NLP cannot always detect novel fake news claims, but it can be used to filter the badly engineered ones.

Claiming something is not fake news, but in fact it is.

I have no idea how NLP would spot fake news or fake personalities.

NLP has been tested on Nigerian email scams.

This is an extremely simple subset.

But how do you make a difference between a true press release claiming that, say, an airplane was hijacked, and a fake press release claiming the same?

I don’t know why I am being downvoted to invisibility when it’s clearly a question I am asking and have confessed that I am asking as a layman.

Having said that, just 20 minutes of searching tells me that there are smarter people working on exactly this. So the joke’s not on me.

In my opinion fake news detection is an ill-defined problem, since the definition of "fake news" itself is not clear.

You might be able to spot blatant inaccuracies like "Mount Everest is located in France"; but then do you really need an NLP tool to tell you that? Verifying anything slightly more complex than that is an AI-complete task, if even humans have a hard time solving it.

Besides, you can manipulate people without writing factually incorrect statements, just by lying by omission and using careful word selection. And this is basically impossible to detect. Other times you have news that just can't be verified, even by humans, or whose verification depends on what source you consider "reliable" (which then introduces a whole lot of bias).

I've worked on the problem personally, and I think the only workable solution would be a tool that would in some way highlights possibly problematic parts of an article they are reading, maybe enrich it with possible related references where the user can read more about the topic (these would be suggested automatically).

Unfortunately, while this kind of solution could be helpful for a "trained" reader, most people don't want to put any effort into consuming news carefully; It would end up helping only those who already have a habit of verifying, which would then be useless to solve the "fake news problem".

You are absolutely right. But when someone from New Zealand is tweeting as an American or someone from Manchester tweeting as a Russian journalist, a subset of fake news can be flagged. (eta: I guess what I am trying to say is that we first have to identify the "unreliable narrator" archetype.) For example, we have AP stylebook in the United states that is related to associated press. Every publication has a recommended style book. Now...can it be mimicked? Yes, of course. But we have at least have one level of authentication. It takes years to master stylebook rules for a human. A fake news generator might be able to pass the Turing test, but I don't think its been done yet.

The downvotes were from the phrasing "Isn’t fake news detection a solved problem with NLP?" is a leading construction. It suggests that everyone already knows that it is solved, whereas that's not true at all.

Bit of both. The terrorism stuff doesn't work nearly as well as they'd like you to think, and knocking out obvious fakes would depress Twitter's engagement statistics.

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