Deutsche Welle (English edition)
How social media is manipulated — and how Russia is involved
Social media posts by Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky are being boosted with likes paid for on promotional sites. This also appears to be the case with other Russian political accounts, as DW has discovered.
It costs between 1 1/2 and 2 rubles, or around 2 cents, to buy a like or a repost on Facebook. That's also the going rate for retweets when Leonid Slutsky's posts need a little nudging on Twitter.
Slutsky is the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma. He often writes about such topics as "provocation from Brussels" or the "hellish absurdity" of the Biden administration on his social media accounts.
And as DW has discovered, he uses the Russian promotional site, bosslike.ru, to buy likes. The site also charges for reposts, views and to inflate subscriber numbers on all the main social media outlets, including Telegram, YouTube and TikTok, and the popular Russian networks, Odnoklassniki or VKontakte.
Bargain- basement prices for social media boost
The platform gives approximate rates for the purchase of various types of activities on specific social networks. But in the end, everyone decides what they're willing to pay to have their posts promoted. The more they pay, the faster it all works. Theoretically, anyone using the site can buy likes or retweets for Slutsky, or any other post or account — all that's needed is a current email address.
All of Slutsky's posts were listed on bosslike.ru when DW began observing the site in midMarch. Within a half hour of appearing online, one of Slutsky's Facebook posts about the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border also appeared on the site to be promoted. DW asked Slutsky in writing if he or any of his staff were paying for likes or reposts, but so far there hasn't been a reply.
Slutsky came to the attention of the wider Russian public in 2018 for allegedly sexually harassing several female journalists. But despite the public furor, he was cleared by the State Duma's ethics committee.
The Dossier Center, a nonprofit organization run by the self-exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is an organization which, in its own words, "tracks the criminal activity of various people associated with the Kremlin."
In an analysis published in early April, it said that the socalled Russian Peace Federation, a group headed by Slutsky, was asking US senators in Washington for grant money. At the same time, Slutsky's social media accounts were ruthlessly criticizing the United States and the European Union.
In a recent Twitter post, Slutsky said "it is not Russia that is pulling away from the EU but rather Brussels that is provoking confrontations." To date, he has received at least 170 likes for this tweet. DW looked into the 78 public accounts that liked the tweet and found that all but one came for the same Russian promotion site. The profiles were also filled with retweets of other posts listed on the promotion site, and at least nine accounts have since been flagged and suspended by Twitter due to suspicious activity.
Politicians compete with influencers, startups for recognition
NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE) has been looking into the issue of buying social media popularity since 2018. Rolf Fredheim, a researcher with the center, said that several accounts belonging to lesser-known local Russian politicians can be found on such promotional sites. He told DW that other prominent lawmakers in the State Duma are also on the list, but he was reluctant to single out any particular politician.
However, Fredheim pointed out that politicians remain relatively rare on such platforms. Most often, it's "some new wannabe celebrity on Instagram or Facebook who wants to boost their presence," he said, estimating that politicians make up only around 10% of the clients. "Most common perhaps would be companies," he continued, because they are just starting out, "and they use these services to make it look like they are bigger and more authentic than they actually are."
On one of the promotional sites, DW uncovered a VKontakte profile belonging to Konstantin Malofeev, the Russian media czar and a confidant of President Vladimir Putin. In his posts, Malofeev —a supporter of Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine — lashes out against "the Kyiv junta" or the "godless EU" on a regular basis.
Another figure on the promotional site is Oleksandr Feldman, a current member of the Ukrainian parliament and a former ally of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in 2014. Feldman is now on the campaign trail and hopes to become the mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in. Social media likes on his posts are going for more than a cent apiece.
Russia leads when it comes to social media manipulation
According to the NATO StratCom COE, Russian companies dominate the market when it comes to manipulating social media networks. In a report published in late 2020, the organization said that nearly all of the big software and infrastructure providers they had identified were of Russian origin.
It said that between 10% and 30% of all likes, reposts and views on these platforms could be attributed to fake social media activities. The center's director, Janis Sarts, told DW the center only has "snapshots of that data, so [...] the full scale of the manipulation is not possible."
In principle, manipulation is possible on almost all platforms, said Sarts. Twitter and Facebook are still considered the safest social networks; manipulation is particularly popular on these sites, so they do the most to prevent it.
"But then YouTube or Instagram are not very well protected.
And in our assessment, TikTok is the least protected of the five platforms we've measured," Sarts told DW.
Social media manipulation ' undermines democratic process'
Paying for likes and subscribers doesn't violate any current laws, but Fredheim believes that the European regulating agencies responsible for such matters should prohibit such exchanges within the EU.
Sarts also thinks that big internet companies need to do a better job at combating bots and social media manipulation, and thinks networks that don't give users the ability to determine whether they are interacting with a bot or a real person should face heavy fines.
"These social media platforms have become the space where the public debate is happening," he said. "And if in that space that kind of manipulation is possible, it undermines the democratic process," Sarts added.
The key to fighting these exchanges is to make them so expensive as to no longer be worthwhile, but Fredheim said it's going to be a long time before we get to that point.
"It's harder to manipulate [on Facebook and Twitter than it was a] few years ago. But it is still quite easy, and it is still quite cheap."
ing these services — and that those who dare to circumvent the law are often delinquents with a criminal history.
While the bill aims to empower sex workers, those in the industry say the buyer and provider are not on equal footing. They say the power has shifted to the client, who often demands riskier practices or unusually low rates.
"We have people that say, 'Hey, I'm criminalized now and I'm taking the risk — you should make the effort.' Or they say they know that I don't have many clients. And now with COVID the law is worse. There are more threats and verbal violence and more threats to publish your personal data onto the internet," said Lesperance.
This is backed by a December 2020 evaluation by researchers at the Sciences Po institute of political studies in Paris, which examined the prostitution act’s "failure" when it comes to power relations between sex workers and clients.
More than 10 sex workers were killed in the six months leading up to February 2020, according to a sex workers' rights group.
'Lack of political commitment' to help sex workers
French Senator Annick Billon, a centrist lawmaker and president of the delegation for women's rights, told DW that around 5,000 fines have been levied against buyers in France since 2016, "which is very little compared to the number of prostitutes estimated at 40,000."
Moreover, 564 people have taken part in support programs that help sex workers exit the industry, but only 161 sex workers completed the process.
Billon argues that more financial resources need to be dedicated to implementing the current law. "There is a lack of human [police, social workers] and financial resources to support prostitutes for administrative formalities, protect them, enable them to undergo professional training and have the resources to live," she said in a statement to DW. "There’s also a lack of political commitment."
"Paradoxically, this law was able to weaken prostitutes. The decline in the number of clients, considered to be delinquents, has forced prostitutes to accept dangerous practices and agree to lower prices," said Billon. "If we had the means to fight against procuring in France as we have the means to fight against drug trafficking, we would make undoubted progress."
'No credible evidence' on link to human trafficking
Many activists seeking to end prostitution say the sex services industry should be criminalized in a bid to thwart human trafficking. But studies and antihuman trafficking organizations, like La Strada International, have rejected this stance, saying there is "no credible evidence" to support the theory.
La Strada International, however, has said the available evidence suggests such laws place consenting sex workers at higher risk, and that there appears to be a double standard in how industries are regulated.
"When it comes to labor exploitation, for example, exploitation of agricultural workers and domestic workers — regardless whether they work here legally or not — people seem to say, ‘Yes, we should give them rights to reduce exploitation, we should regulate their work and empower them.' But the moment you start to talk about sex workers, it suddenly seems to be a different issue," Suzanne Hoff, international coordinator for La Strada International, told DW.
Is the Swedish model effective?
France's 2016 reform on prostitution was inspired by Sweden, which in 1999 was the first country in the world to criminalize the purchase of sex but not the sale.
Some sex workers in Ireland, which adopted the so-called Nordic model in 2017, and in Sweden told DW that they, too, have been forced into more precarious conditions to make a living.
There are limited independent studies available on the impact of the law. The Swedish government reviewed its policy in 2010 and found that street prostitution had been reduced by half. "This reduction may be considered to be a direct result of the criminalization of sex purchases," it said. Sex workers, however, say their services simply moved indoors or were made available through clandestine and precarious situations.
A 2015 report by the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education found that evidence of the desired effects of the legislation was "weak" and that the law had contributed to "unintended consequences."
That same year, University of Cambridge researcher Jay Levy published a 255-page book after years of research, arguing that "while Sweden has been unsuccessful in achieving its aim to eliminate (or even demonstrably diminish) prostitution, it is, in fact, clear that there have been adverse material effects of Swedish abolitionism."
"Other nations will no doubt continue to look to Sweden when drafting or proposing prostitutional law and policy. They would do well, though, to learn the real lessons of the Swedish model."
Human rights violation?
Human rights group Amnesty International in 2016 issued a policy on sex work, declaring that to protect sex workers’ rights "it is necessary not only to repeal laws which criminalize the sale of sex, but also to repeal those which make the buying of sex from consenting adults or the organization of sex work (such as prohibitions on renting premises for sex work) a criminal offense."
A bid to have the ban on buying sex overturned was rejected by France's top constitutional court in 2019. But the matter could be decided by the European Court of Human Rights, which is currently reviewing the case.
Lesperance is one of the more than 260 people of various nationalities who have filed a complaint with the court. For her, the goal is simple. "We could ask for compensation, but what we see is that this bill is a crime against sex workers," she said.
"This kind of policy is so bad that I want to make sure that other European countries are sent the message that human rights are being denied with such a law."