Russia has helped amplify and spread false and misleading internet claims about recent hurricanes in the United States and the federal government’s response, part of a wider effort by the Kremlin to manipulate America’s political discourse before the presidential election, new research shows.
The content, spread by Russian state media and networks of social media accounts and websites, criticizes the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, exploiting legitimate concerns about the recovery effort in an attempt to paint American leaders as incompetent and corrupt, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The London-based organization tracks disinformation and online extremism.
In some cases, the claims about the storms include fake images created using artificial intelligence, such as a photo depicting scenes of devastating flooding at Disney World that never happened, researchers say.
Im not saying you’re wrong, but I’ve worked with fema and so has my family since we do restoration on thr affected houses, at least in my home state. And i never heard of nothing like this happening. I am sorry if thats how it worked out for you.
Thanks, I hope it goes better for most people. For what it’s worth the FEMA employees we talked to in person seemed to be genuinely interested in helping but that’s a big part of why it was so frustrating; the people on the ground were saying very different things than the people sending emails and approving funding.
Okay, but we’re talking about russia undermining americans trusts in FEMA. As bad as it is fod me to say this, even if your claim is true, this is not the time to be bringing it up.
Sure it is. If you want people to trust you then be trustworthy. Attempting to reclaim funds handed out during a disaster that were ridiculously difficult to obtain in the first place is not what I would call worthy of trust. If my experience with FEMA had been a positive one I’d be here saying good things about them but I’m not and that is entirely their fault, not Russia’s.