Meta removed a dipfeke about the surrender of Volodymyr Zelensky
On Wednesday, March 16, Meta released a video in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky allegedly ordered his surrender and announced his surrender. Ukraine was ready for this fake, the special services warned about it a long time ago, and the low quality of the video came as a surprise.
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Meta’s security policy department, explained that the company had removed content for violating its rules on media that use forms of multimedia disinformation.
The video, where President Zelensky allegedly calls for surrender, was quickly intercepted by Meta. The company promptly removed it from the social networks Facebook and Instagram. At the same time, according to cybersecurity researchers DFRLab, the dip fake is widely distributed on the Russian social network VKontakte.
DFRLab also noted that a number of pro-Russian Telegram channels also published a deep fake on Wednesday, in which Zelensky allegedly called on the country to surrender.
2/ We've quickly reviewed and removed this video for violating our policy against misleading manipulated media, and notified our peers at other platforms.
— Nathaniel Gleicher (@ngleicher) March 16, 2022
In addition, on the afternoon of March 16, hackers broke into a joint broadcast of Ukrainian TV channels, where the team of Ukraine 24 TV channel was working at the time.
In the moving line at the bottom of the screen, one could see a fake statement, allegedly made on behalf of Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he spoke of capitulation and called on the Ukrainian military to lay down its arms.
Vladimir Zelensky’s reaction
The President of Ukraine reacted quickly to the misinformation. He recorded a video in response with a clear message to Ukrainians and Russians, emphasizing that he offered to lay down his arms and surrender only to the Russian occupiers.
