The elections "resurrected" the dead Russians

Their social networks are called to vote and support Vladimir Putin

Three -day presidential elections began in Russia. Already on the first day of voting, the social networks filled the posts with the hashtags #all seven and #Choosing a president. Especially a lot of such publications on VKontakte: and many people are surprised to see updates on the abandoned pages of their friends or relatives. Agitation appears even in the accounts of people who died several years ago. "Cold" tells how old pages and bots are used for propaganda.

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Petersburger Anastasia Kimklis noted that the page on Vkontakte of her brother Paul, who died 14 years ago, was active again: she appeared several posts about the campaign in polling stations - while each of them contained photos of different people. One of the photographs was taken at the polling station No. 195 in Khabarovsk, although Pavel was from St. Petersburg.

After the complaints of users, Paul's page was blocked . His relatives told reporters that the man died more than 10 years ago, July 23, 2010: he had a stroke during a bathing in Lake Ladoga. According to the relatives of Paul, not a single person in photographs from fasting is related to the deceased.

“Cold” found that this is not the only case when abandoned pages on VKontakte are used to propagate and campaign in elections.

#the whole seven

On March 15, 2024, posts with the hashtags #all seven and #Choosing President began to appear in Vkontakte. In the news section on the social network, new publications appear every few seconds: they have the same text about how important the elections are, or hashtags.

The page of Evgenia Dexyarev has not been updated since 2019, but on the afternoon of March 15, a post with a hashtag #all seven and call to go to the polls: “Join!”

The page of Alexander Isaev since the beginning of 2023 has been used for pro -government propaganda. In one of the last posts , the photo of a man and a woman who came to the polls is radically different from other photos in the profile of this person. Judging by the comments , four years ago the owner of this account was called Denis.

On the user's page Pavel Cowz, on which since 2022 there were no records, on March 15, agitation appeared with an appeal to come to the polls.

“He voted #all seven in the elections, and his wife will vote remotely at work,” the post with a photograph of a pensioner says on a page where there are no other photos and publications.

On many pages that publish similar posts, the first records appeared in 2022 or 2023. Most often, there are nothing in the publications of such profiles but propaganda statements in support of the current Russian government. Some pages are used only on elections - for agitation. There are pages on which the first records appeared only in February or March 2024: the hashtag #the whole seven stands at all their publications. Some accounts simultaneously urge to come to the elections with the whole family and advertise electronic voting. Some of them write that they had a voice for Vladimir Putin.

The army of the dead

A former employee of one of the Russian digital agencies anonymously told the Cold that it is very easy to hack or steal someone else's account-especially if the page has long been abandoned. Often employees of communication agencies or people working on power structures buy them on exchanges of hacking accounts. Their cost varies from 50 kopecks for a profile of the lowest quality to several hundred rubles for a well -completed page.

“Accordingly, anyone, even though I, even though you can go to this exchange at any time, throw 500 rubles there and buy 100 accounts from these 500 rubles, from which everything can do more or less,” he said.

Some accounts are designed specifically for propaganda. For example, the page of Anastasia Lapshina , where only propaganda content is published. Despite the women's account, the signatures for some posts are written in a male gender, and there is simply no personal information on the page. With a high probability, these can also be bots that are conducted by employees of communication agencies, the interlocutor of the “cold” claims.

Publications with the call to go to the elections are also posted by real people - most often these are civil servants, employees of kindergartens , schools or universities . But most of these publications probably make bots from pages-dummies: every minute on VKontakte, dozens of posts with hashtags #all seven and #Choosing President come out.

Many civil servants are forced to vote on March 15. The teacher from one of the Russian schools told the "cold" that all the teachers of their schools were asked to come to the polling station and take a picture with forms before voting. Also, under the hashtag, the whole seven is forced to report on the campaign on the elections of many state employees, and the mayor of the Berdsk of the Novosibirsk region called him “one of the tasks of the Great Family Project“ The whole family ”.” The same is required by employees of Moscow budgetary institutions, and sometimes they were required to vote from them in the morning.