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Fact check: How do I spot bots and trolls?

Deutsche Welle · 🇩🇪 public Germany · · 1196 words · By Thomas Sparrow; Tetyana Klug
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What to know about Fact check: How do I spot bots and trolls?

August 19, 2026 Hundreds of thousands of inauthentic social media accounts.

Claims checked 7
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center100%
Right0%

5 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

August 19, 2026 Hundreds of thousands of inauthentic social media accounts.

Why it matters

These are some of the figures cited by the German Foreign Ministry in connection with a Russian disinformation campaign that was first detected in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Common ground

Known as Doppelgänger, the operation aimed to amplify pro-Russian narratives on social media platforms in countries like Germany.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-how-do-i-spot-fake-social-media-accounts-bots-a…

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 7 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

verified Verified By Reference 3
check_circle Corroborated 3
verified Verified 1
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Claim 1: “At least in Europe, social media platforms are required under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to release transparency reports, including how much content they delete.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and official EU descriptions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) confirm it establishes a framework for platform transparency, including requirements for transparency reports on content moderation.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. The regulation entered into force on 1 November 2022 and became applicable, for the…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Digital Services Act (DSA) is an EU regulation that entered into force in 2022, establishing a comprehensive legal framework for digital services accountability, content moderation, and platform t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Services_Act
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Interoperable Europe Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/903) is a regulation of the European Union that establishes a framework for cross-border interoperability of network and information systems used to …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoperable_Europe_Act
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
Claim 2: “In the last three months of 2025, for instance, Meta reported taking action on 1.1 billion accounts.”
VERIFIED
A Statista result explicitly states that in the fourth quarter of 2025, Facebook (Meta) took action on 1.1 billion fake accounts.
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web search NEUTRAL — 1 billion global active TikTok users each month.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/27/tiktok-reaches-1-billion-mon…
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web search NEUTRAL — Explore the Hearthstone meta tier list, find the best decks for every class,and how the archetypes match up.
https://hsreplay.net/meta/?hgi=1&hgd=eyJpIjoiZ3ciLCJ0IjoxNzg…
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web search NEUTRAL — Facebook is the most popular social network in the world with almost three billion monthly active users.The more pressing challenge, though, was platform integrity: in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone…
https://www.statista.com/topics/751/facebook/
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Claim 3: “EUvsDisinfo, a project by the European External Action Service to counter disinformation, found that the agency had disseminated falsehoods and pro-Kremlin messages in multiple languages during various European and US election campaigns and in the lead-up to several referenda.”
CORROBORATED
Evidence from EUvsDisinfo and Wikipedia confirms that the project (part of the European External Action Service) tracks pro-Kremlin disinformation and that the IRA has been involved in foreign election interference.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The East StratCom Task Force (ESCTF or ESTF) is a part of the European External Action Service, focused on "effective communication" and promotion of European Union activities in Eastern Europe (inclu…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_StratCom_Task_Force
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Internet Research Agency (IRA; Russian: Агентство интернет-исследований, romanized: Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy; 2013–2023), also known as Glavset (Russian: Главсеть, lit. 'Central Network'), …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Russian disinformation campaigns have occurred in many countries. For example, disinformation campaigns led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch, have been reported in several African countries…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 4: “These are some of the figures cited by the German Foreign Ministry in connection with a Russian disinformation campaign that was first detected in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web search results confirm that the German Foreign Ministry documented a Russian disinformation campaign (specifically 'Doppelgänger') targeting Germany following the invasion of Ukraine.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Federal Foreign Office (German: Auswärtiges Amt, pronounced [ˈaʊsˌvɛʁtɪɡəs ˈʔamt] ; abbreviated AA) is the foreign ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany, a federal agency responsible for bot…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Foreign_Office
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the German Democratic Republic (German: Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, abbreviated MfAA) was a government body of…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_for_Foreign_Affairs_(…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MFA Russia; Russian: Министерство иностранных дел Российской Федерации, МИД России, romanized: Ministerstvo inostrannykh del Rossiiskoi Feder…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Foreign_Affairs_(R…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 5: “On some days, thousands of the accounts were active, posting more than once per second in a coordinated manner, the ministry said in a 2024 report.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
While evidence confirms the existence of the Doppelgänger campaign and the German Foreign Ministry's involvement, the specific statistic regarding 'thousands of accounts posting more than once per second' in a 2024 report is not present in the provided evidence.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — ChatGPT is a generative AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. Originally released on November 30, 2022, the product uses large language models—specifically generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs)—to gene…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Doppelgänger is a Russian disinformation campaign established in 2022 by Russian IT firm Social Design Agency (SDA). It has targeted Ukraine, Germany, France, and the United States, with the aim of un…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelganger_(disinformation_c…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Below is a list of foreign electoral interventions by country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_electoral_inte…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 6: “Known as Doppelgänger, the operation aimed to amplify pro-Russian narratives on social media platforms in countries like Germany.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent web sources and Wikipedia confirm the existence of the 'Doppelgänger' operation, its pro-Russian nature, and its targeting of Germany and other European countries.
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web search NEUTRAL — Germany Targeted by the Pro-Russian Disinformation Campaign “Doppelgänger”. Summary.“Doppelgänger” operates in multiple languages and has targeted several countries in Europe and around the world, inc…
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/resource/blob/2682484/2da319…
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web search NEUTRAL — The Russian disinformation campaign known as "DoppelGänger" was unmasked earlier this year as a generative AI-fueled, clandestine operation targeting Western media and society.
https://www.doppel.com/blog/russian-disinformation-campaign-…
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web search NEUTRAL — Efforts to combat the Russian disinformation campaigns on social media have varied. In July 2024, CeMAS and the international research group Counter Disinformation Network informed X of 623 posts that…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/542708/russia-disinformatio…
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Claim 7: “One of the most prominent examples of a troll factory is the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and multiple web sources explicitly identify the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg as a prominent Russian troll factory.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use b…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Internet Research Agency (IRA; Russian: Агентство интернет-исследований, romanized: Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy; 2013–2023), also known as Glavset (Russian: Главсеть, lit. 'Central Network'), …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A troll farm or troll factory is an institutionalised group of internet trolls that seeks to interfere in political opinions and decision-making. A troll farm may use sockpuppetry, bots or coordinated…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_farm
+ 3 more evidence sources
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.