Graphika report details a Russia-based influence campaign, known as Secondary Infektion, that ran over 6 years and 300 sites, but failed to win a large audience
Group known as Secondary Infektion used multiple languages, burner accounts to circumvent attempts to detect it
Wall Street JournalRobert McMillan
Context & Ripple Effects
Secondary Infektion is the stealth end of a spectrum the coverage has mapped before: where the IRA's ten-million-tweet archive showed a coordinated campaign that actually landed, and the 2017 fake-account investigation traced operatives pushing anti-Clinton material onto Twitter and Facebook, Graphika's report documents an operation built for evasion — burner accounts, many languages, 300 sites — that never converted stealth into reach.
That failure is the finding. It matters because it separates operational sophistication from audience capture, giving platforms and researchers a benchmark for what the next wave of operations has to fix — and later reporting shows the evolution: Meta's takedown of networks impersonating news outlets to push anti-Ukraine content, and the hijacking of influential Bluesky accounts rather than building audiences from scratch.
First-order effects
Platforms hosting Secondary Infektion's burner accounts and site network gain a six-year map of evasion techniques — multilingual personas, disposable identities — that can feed directly into detection systems already shaped by earlier takedowns.
Graphika's attribution hands governments and platforms evidence that a long-running Russia-based effort produced volume without influence, sharpening how they prioritize which operations to disrupt.
Second-order effects
Operators reading the same report learn the lesson the Bluesky case later confirms: when organic audience-building fails, co-opting real accounts with existing followings becomes the cheaper route to reach.
Meta's accumulation of 200+ coordinated inauthentic behavior takedowns since 2016 signals that platform trust-and-safety teams have industrialized the response, forcing campaigns toward smaller, more fragmented footprints across more venues than any single platform monitors.
Third-order effects
The industry splits between two models — high-reach campaigns like the IRA's archive versus high-evasion campaigns like Secondary Infektion — pushing measurement away from follower counts toward persistence and cross-platform coordination as the metrics of threat.
If stealth-but-unread operations keep burning resources for no audience, state-backed influence spending drifts toward hybrid tactics — impersonated news brands and hijacked accounts — making publisher identity verification a structural battleground between platforms and researchers.
The trend: Russian influence operations are shifting from building their own audiences at scale to evading detection through burner infrastructure and borrowed credibility, with research firms like Graphika documenting each iteration faster than the campaigns adapt.
🆕 Today, we are exposing 6 years of “Secondary Infektion” activity, a persistent Russian information operation network which we've been investigating for months. It lives here, in 150 pages of details, with its database and carousel of forgeries (!): https://www.secondaryinfektio…
BREAKING: @Graphika_NYC has been digging into Russian info op #SecondaryInfektion for months. Today, we're exposing its full scale. 6 years 7 languages > 2,500 pieces of content > 300 platforms (no, that's not a typo) And some truly epic fails. https://secondaryinfektion.org/ htt…
Graphika is out with the most comprehensive look yet at the Russian information operation known as Secondary Infektion, which used forgeries and fake posts on 300 platforms in 7 languages. w/@CraigTimberg https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
One of the most interesting aspects (to me) of this report on a Russian information operation is the identification of cross-platform personas that seed content (including forgeries) on social media, online forums, and blogging websites. https://twitter.com/...
The operation, named “Secondary Infektion,” has sought to spread pro-Russian propaganda across the globe by sharing fake tweets from U.S. elected officials and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. https://www.npr.org/...
Ben and graphika doing the hard work here. This was what a lot of reporters missed the 1st go around with the russians. They never operate on just one platform. And if they are using live journal, it's probably them. 😃 https://twitter.com/...
Information operations continue. This is massive - and shows that manipulation continues. In the US, the Mueller Report lays out the Russian nets that targeted Americans and #BlackLivesMatter @camillefrancois @Graphika_NYC released this bombshell. What does it mean for elections?…
Man, this unhinged conspiracy theory focused on dividing the critics of Russian intelligence/Mafiya and getting them to fight amongst themselves. Almost like the Russians have done for 100 years. https://twitter.com/...
Interesting study but much #facebook & others funding is going on researching content that was barely engaged with by the sound of it, which also could not apparently attribute to specific source? Meanwhile #influenceindustry remains under-researched? #SecondaryInfektion I'm not …
Russian disinformation is aggressive, widespread, and, sadly, effective. We need to be on guard against these “active measures” campaigns. Be smart about what you share; if it seems fishy, it probably is. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
In addition to the well documented disinformation campaigns by Russia's IRA and GRU, a third group operated at the same time — using fake accounts & forged documents in an attempt to influence elections & divide critics in the West, @Graphika_NYC found. https://www.bloomberg.com/…
A Russia-based group has for the last 6 years peddled forged documents and used fake social-media accounts in an effort to influence elections and divide critics in the West, according to a new report https://www.bloomberg.com/...
New report says a Russia-based group has waged a 6-year online campaign to influence elections & divide critics, posting in seven languages on more than 300 web platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & Reddit: https://www.bloomberg.com/...
When and how do we want platforms to work together to weed this stuff out? And with governments? With what oversight (currently none!)? How to think about the information ecosystem as a whole and not platform-by-platform is one of the biggest qs here https://knightcolumbia.org/..…
Dubbed “Secondary Infektion” by researchers, the network was part of Russia's bid to use social media to polarize Americans ahead of the 2016 elections. https://www.snopes.com/...
New: Report released by @Graphika_NYC documents the six year trail of Russia's Secondary Infektion disinformation campaign. Thousands of pieces of content across hundreds of platforms. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ...
Russian operatives used online forgeries, fake blog posts and more than 300 social media platforms to undermine opponents and spin disinformation about perceived enemies throughout the world, including in the United States. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...