The young Ukrainians battling pro-Russian trolls
- Published
Katrin on holiday in happier times. She found her social media awash with fake posts after the invasion began
What's it like being a young Ukrainian experiencing war while wading through chaos and misinformation on social media?
24-year-old Katrin awoke in Kyiv last Thursday to the sound of an explosion - and soon enough found her social media feed awash with distressing posts.
"The first thing we had to do was to pack and go to the basement," she tells me, now safe in her small hometown outside of Lviv where she escaped with her boyfriend, neighbours and their dogs.
"But right after we went down, I started scrolling Instagram. And it was all on my Instagram stories and my posts."
She wasn't just seeing scary, factual posts from friends, but false information - including comments on TikTok from accounts that claimed the war "wasn't real" or that it was a "hoax".
"After I blocked this one account, another sprung up with a profile picture of a different girl, writing to me in Russian," Katrin says.
The trolls have been prolific - and they have been interacting with young women across Ukraine.
Rumours on Telegram
Alina, 18, found herself in a total panic after seeing posts in Russian suggesting that her neighbourhood in Zaporizhzhya in south-east Ukraine was about to be shelled and destroyed. But the rumours were false.
Screengrabs of messages in Russia falsely claiming that an attack was imminent on Alina's town
Alina spoke to me from her bedroom, exhausted after nights of air raids and sheltering. She says that rumours moved rapidly on chat app Telegram, spread by people apparently setting out to cause panic.
"Russians specifically find our chats and write that something is exploding. Someone writes that there is a sign of a bomb in the area - then others refute the information," she says.
Alina pictured last summer in Ukraine
Another video she saw on Telegram suggested there had been an explosion at the airport in her hometown. It turned out to be a different explosion, in the nearby city of Mariupol.
A video shared with false claims that there was an explosion in Alina's hometown
Old footage from other conflicts, including the massive blast in Beirut in 2020, has also been shared widely - including on TikTok, where clips have racked up millions of views.
Marta is 20 years old and was stuck in the UK where she was visiting friends when the war broke out. She says she's seen videos from Syria and Iraq.
"But they posted them as 'Ukraine'," she says.
She says videos on TikTok's For You Page - the main gateway into the video-sharing app - have left her terrified and angry, as she desperately worries for friends and family back home.
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Battling the trolls
All three women have found themselves battling accounts posting comments in support of Russia.
The videos posted by one of the pro-Russian accounts Jess promoting false claims about the war in Ukraine.
"Some of them started to post videos, they started to call Ukraine 'liars'," Marta says.
Some were blaming Ukraine for the violence, writing "glory to Russia" - and others falsely suggested that the war was somehow staged.
"Every time I decided to take a look at those accounts, they were a profile with zero followers, zero likes, zero following, with a profile picture of a Russian flag or something," Marta says.
Many of the TikTok accounts that the women shared with me appear to have lifted photos from other accounts online. Like Marta says, they have few or no followers, and they don't use their real names - or use generic usernames.
Marta has been battling pro-Russian trolls online
One I looked at used the name "Jess" and had just one follower. The only videos on the account are ones first shared just days ago, indicating that the account was created very recently.
Almost all of the videos the account did share featured debunked and false claims: that a woman who was injured during a Russian attack was an actor, that news coverage is filled with footage of old conflicts, and even that the war somehow isn't happening.
One account Katrin ended up arguing with on TikTok again had few followers - its profile image appears to be copied from the Pinterest page of a Korean woman.
None of the accounts have responded to my attempts to get in touch - so it's hard to tell who is running them. Russia has created inauthentic accounts before to push messages and sow division. But it's also possible that the accounts are run by real people who believe false claims.
Social media policies
Misinformation is a problem social media companies have been grappling with for some time. Now their policies are coming under fresh scrutiny.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, along with Twitter and Google, have all announced commitments to tackle false information and propaganda around the war in Ukraine.
But it's apps like Telegram and TikTok - used a lot by young Ukrainians - is where much of this disinformation continues to proliferate.
TikTok told the BBC it has "increased resources to respond to emerging trends and remove violative content, including harmful misinformation and promotion of violence." Telegram did not respond to our request for comment.
It's clear that what's happening online is causing even more panic and pain in the real world.
"We are scared by those who create this fake information," Alina tells me, ready to head yet again down to the basement as the air raid siren rings out.