The color and brightness of the face and body seem to come from different recordings, the sound of the voice has something artificial: the fake video, in which the Ukrainian president allegedly calls on his country's soldiers to lay down their arms, is easy to unmask even for laypeople.

The video first appeared on the news website Ukraine 24 on Wednesday after it was allegedly attacked by hackers.

It then spread across the internet, including on the meta services Facebook and Instagram.

However, it was only visible there for a short time: "We quickly reviewed and removed this video because it violates our policy against misleading, manipulated media," announced Meta security chief Nathaniel Gleicher on Twitter on Wednesday evening.

Fridtjof Küchemann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

  • Follow I follow

In the "Transparency Center", Facebook counts a video among the "misinformation we remove" when the production as a so-called deepfake using artificial intelligence "fuses, combines, replaces and/or overlays content with a video, resulting in a video that is authentic." appears".

It is not so easy to tell whether the fake Selenskyj video is actually a deepfake in this narrower sense.

But even if a video was "edited or synthesized beyond adjustments for clarity or quality in a way" that "would probably lead an average person to believe that a person in the video said words they didn't say." ', it is removed.

In the case of Marina Ovsyannikova, there has also been discussion as to whether her sensational appearance on Russian state television could have been faked or at least staged.

The editor stood behind the news anchor on Monday evening on the main news of the first channel with a protest poster.

It read, "Stop the war.

Don't believe the propaganda.

Here you will be lied to".

The journalist shouted “No to the war” several times.

There is no live broadcast of the news on Russian television, it was claimed, and the staging was intended to show that Western concerns about censorship and repression in Russian media were exaggerated.

The fine of 30,000 rubles (about 265 euros), which Ovzyannikova was initially sentenced to, seems to support this claim.

However, criminal proceedings against her are still pending.

In early March, Russia's parliament voted to amend the law that would allow up to 15 years in prison for using words like "attack," "invasion," and "declaration of war" in coverage of the war against Ukraine.

Shortly after her action, the Twitter handle @MarinaOvsy gained thousands of new followers.

"I don't regret what I did": Statements like this were found here in English under a picture of the editor, taken from a video message published on TV to accompany her protest.

"Whatever the consequences: I will wear them like an award." The profile was only set up this month and, according to Twitter, was switched off again on Tuesday.

In the short phase of its existence, however, it not only attracted a lot of attention, but also went under different names.

According to research by NBC News journalist Matthew Mulligan, it was allegedly operated by American journalist Juan Arredondo, who was wounded in Ukraine on Sunday.

Sebastian Erb reports in the "taz" that the account initially ran under the name "Anonymous Ukraine".

Apparently, it was intended to gain popularity among the much-sought names at the time, which later could have been used to spread other messages.

As obvious as the forgeries mentioned – the Zelenskyj video and the Ovsyannikova profile on Twitter – were on closer inspection, the realization that the information disseminated here cannot be trusted has two prerequisites: it takes time and a stable internet.

Both are scarce precisely where disinformation can currently have the most sensitive effect.

However, falling for it, acting on it, spreading it further is a matter of seconds and possible even under adverse conditions.