Fake attack

The current Russian military operation against the Ukrainian regime will certainly go into textbooks.

Not only history (after all, the world was really divided into "before" and "after") - and not even only military affairs (after all, such a large-scale operation is carried out in such a short time).

First of all, in textbooks on the information war: after all, its scale, deployed against Russia, turned out to be unprecedented.

Not only in Russian, but also in world history.

All possible "bookmarks" were used to attack the brains of the Russians.

Artists and opinion leaders campaigned for the end of hostilities, the opposition media circulated Ukrainian fakes about the colossal losses of the Russian army and gave the floor to media experts from Kyiv who know how to catch up with panic.

The Internet turned out to be full of advertisements in support of Ukraine and against the current Russian government.

Such a wide scope of the information war shows that they systematically prepared for it - probably for many months - and at X-hour they let it into the network.

And, of course, it was by no means Ukrainians who were preparing - the level of professionalism speaks rather about the participation of the British or Americans.

As for the Russian government, it was not ready for such a scale of fakes.

Only a few days after the start of the operation, more or less serious information work began to be carried out - the consequences of replicating Ukrainian fakes (up to 15 years), and supporting Ukraine in the war (up to 20 years) were explained.

In addition, those Russian media that helped the Ukrainian leadership to deceive the Russians were covered up.

In particular, Dozhd* recognized as a foreign agent, as well as Ekho Moskvy.

And there is no need to shout about freedom of speech here - freedom implies not only the right to express one's opinion,

However, if offline, pro-Ukrainian propaganda was quickly defeated, then on the Internet there was still a field unplowed by Roskomnadzor.

Various pirated video hosting sites were filled with pro-Ukrainian ads (you even start to miss online casino ads), pages were filled with contextual advertising - however, the most difficult situation was in Western social networks.

First of all, on Facebook.

Yes, sometimes the ads that popped up there looked like normal ads - for example, with the slogan "Stop the war!"

or with PR of some Western articles about Zelensky and Ukraine.

Sometimes it was about broadcasting fakes under the Ukrainian flag - for example, when data on colossal Russian losses came from a page with a Ukrainian flag.

However, there were other, much more dangerous fakes for the consciousness of Russians.

So, for example, on the same Facebook pages of companies with logos of leading Russian TV channels or media are created.

Then, on their behalf, information is given that, for example, Russian banks are about to stop issuing deposits, and enterprises - salaries.

It is clear that not every user of the social network understands information hygiene and will go to the "advertiser" page (where he will see that it was created a few days ago,

It is not surprising that all these reports have made their very big contribution to fomenting panic among the Russian population.

And the authorities need to find a way to deal with them.

On the one hand, you can ban and close.

We are now following this path, and as a result, Western platforms have found themselves in a very difficult dilemma.

If they continue to hand over their platforms for clumsy anti-Russian activities, then they will be closed - and in this case they may lose the opportunity to continue to engage in competent anti-Russian activities in the Russian Federation (that is, the accurate promotion of various anti-state content).

That is why, for example, YouTube has already made concessions - according to rumors, video hosting has decided to temporarily stop showing ads for Russians.

Not anti-state, but all advertising, which (such a small bonus for anti-Russian strategists from this forced decision) will lead to losses for Russian bloggers who earn on monetization.

However, Facebook is holding on.

Fake advertising on the social network remains, pessimization of pro-Russian posts is also in place.

Therefore, it is possible that the work of the social network will be suspended on the territory of the Russian Federation (as of the morning of March 4, such rumors were actively circulating).

However, there is another variant of behavior - not to interfere with the fake throwers.

Yes, the option is strange, but it has its own logic.

The fact is that the goals of this mass fake company are extremely short-term - to force the Russian Federation to capitulate in Ukraine and stop the operation.

That is why there is such a colossal wave of completely radical fakes that should shake the mind at the level of emotions - however, the reverse side of the coin of such a bulk is the extremely low, near-plinth quality and textured content of fakes.

And if the Russian authorities hold out, if the consequences promised by fakes do not come (for example, banks continue to give people money), then these fakes will turn against the fake throwers themselves.

The awakened consciousness of people is aware of the depth of the deception, which, in turn, will lead to a sharp drop in trust in conditional liberals and Westerners (who,

In fact, the process is already underway.

On Russian TV, political talk shows are now running non-stop, they provide information competently and without jingoistic or guard-patriotic hysteria, and young people, including my students, are already watching these programs.

They look and believe in what they show there.

So time is on our side.

The main thing now is not to lose the received credit of information trust and to use it correctly.

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The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.