Russia Poisons Wikipedia

俄罗斯正在“毒害”维基百科

How state-sponsored actors exploit the crowd-sourced platform to skew reality, create ‘foreign digital interference’ and what that means for the future of facts 国家支持的行动者如何利用这一众包平台扭曲现实、制造“外国数字干预”，以及这对事实的未来意味着什么

As AI chatbots continue to advance, Russia is infecting them with Kremlin-manipulated content tailored to influence the global internet, distorting the public’s understanding of facts and ability to make well-informed decisions. 随着人工智能聊天机器人的不断进步，俄罗斯正利用克里姆林宫操纵的内容对其进行“感染”，这些内容旨在影响全球互联网，扭曲公众对事实的认知以及做出明智决策的能力。

—Exposing Pravda: How pro-Kremlin forces are poisoning AI models and rewriting Wikipedia, Atlantic Council ——《揭露真理报：亲克里姆林宫势力如何毒害人工智能模型并改写维基百科》，大西洋理事会

Yesterday, I read a Wikipedia page for a book I’m about to review. I am still unsettled. 昨天，我阅读了一本我即将评论的书的维基百科页面。至今我仍感到不安。

The page was stripped of reality, and in its place was a sanitized fairytale where Putin is good and the book — a brutal and damning historic account of Soviet abuses — is subtly and not so subtly undermined from every direction. 该页面剥离了现实，取而代之的是一个经过美化的童话故事：普京被描述为正面人物，而那本书——一本关于苏联暴行的残酷且令人震惊的历史记录——则从各个方面受到明里暗里的诋毁。

Once I got over the shock of what I had just read — it was like being forced into an alternate reality — I began investigating Russia’s relationship to Wikipedia. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Russian state has been steadily distorting truth, exploiting the platform’s crowd-sourcing architecture to influence public knowledge. 在从刚才阅读内容的震惊中平复后——那种感觉就像被迫进入了一个平行现实——我开始调查俄罗斯与维基百科的关系。或许并不令人意外，俄罗斯政府一直在稳步扭曲事实，利用该平台的众包架构来影响公众认知。

Malign Activity

恶意活动

In a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue titled Identifying Sock Puppets on Wikipedia, its authors used a ‘semantic clustering’ approach to focus on the “English-language Wikipedia entry for the Russo-Ukrainian war, and 48 other pages about Ukraine that link directly to it.” The authors wrote: 在战略对话研究所（Institute for Strategic Dialogue）题为《识别维基百科上的马甲账号》的报告中，作者使用了一种“语义聚类”方法，重点研究了“俄乌战争的英文维基百科条目，以及其他48个直接链接到该条目的关于乌克兰的页面”。作者写道：

Malign activity has targeted a number of information environments, including every major social media platform: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, standalone websites and many others. This paper, however, is dedicated to possible platform manipulation on a venue that tends to be much less researched than mainstream social media: Wikipedia. 恶意活动已经瞄准了多个信息环境，包括每一个主流社交媒体平台：Twitter、Facebook、YouTube、Instagram、TikTok、独立网站以及其他许多平台。然而，本文致力于研究一个比主流社交媒体研究得少得多的平台上的潜在操纵行为：维基百科。

This report presents work that set out to create, trial and evaluate a method to try to detect covert and organised manipulation of Wikipedia at scale. 本报告展示了一项旨在创建、试验和评估一种方法的工作，试图大规模检测对维基百科的隐蔽且有组织的操纵。

As I quickly learned, multiple reports have explored “organized manipulation” on Wikipedia’s entries on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 正如我很快了解到的，多份报告已经探讨了维基百科上关于俄罗斯入侵乌克兰条目的“有组织操纵”。

Portal Kombat

“门户战斗”（Portal Kombat）

Between September and December 2023, the French defense agency Vigilance and Protection Service against Foreign Digital Interference (VIGINUM) analyzed “information portals” disseminating pro-Russian content and targeting several western countries, including France. 2023年9月至12月期间，法国国防机构“外国数字干预警惕与保护局”（VIGINUM）分析了传播亲俄内容并针对包括法国在内的多个西方国家的“信息门户网站”。

In the VIGINUM report, PORTAL KOMBAT: A structured and coordinated pro-Russian propaganda network, researchers investigated a network of 193 sites that initially covered news from “Russian and Ukrainian localities.” 在VIGINUM的报告《门户战斗：一个结构化且协调的亲俄宣传网络》中，研究人员调查了一个由193个网站组成的网络，这些网站最初报道来自“俄罗斯和乌克兰各地”的新闻。

According to the research, the coverage changed the day after Russia invaded Ukraine and began to target occupied Ukrainian territories and western countries supporting Ukraine and its population. The sites in this network produce “no original content but massively relay publications from sources that are primarily three types: social media accounts of Russian or pro-Russian actors, Russian news agencies, and official websites of local institutions or actors.” 根据研究，在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的第二天，报道内容发生了变化，开始针对乌克兰被占领土以及支持乌克兰及其民众的西方国家。该网络中的网站“不产生原创内容，而是大量转发主要来自三类来源的出版物：俄罗斯或亲俄行动者的社交媒体账号、俄罗斯新闻机构，以及当地机构或行动者的官方网站。”

“The main objective seems to be to cover the Russo-Ukrainian conflict by presenting positively ‘the special military operation’ and denigrating Ukraine and its leaders. Very ideologically oriented, this content repeatedly presents inaccurate or misleading narratives. As for the portal targeting France, pravda-fr[.]com, it directly contributes to polarize the Francophone digital public debate.” “其主要目标似乎是通过正面呈现‘特别军事行动’并诋毁乌克兰及其领导人来报道俄乌冲突。这些内容具有极强的意识形态导向，反复呈现不准确或误导性的叙事。至于针对法国的门户网站 pravda-fr[.]com，它直接助长了法语数字公共辩论的极化。”

VIGINUM caught an insertion of the site pravda-fr[.]com being used as a source for a Wikipedia article about a “geopolitical situation” in the Red Sea. VIGINUM发现，网站 pravda-fr[.]com 被插入并用作维基百科一篇关于红海“地缘政治局势”文章的来源。

In a footnote, they wrote: “The Wikipedia article titled ‘Operation Guardian of Prosperity’ created on December 22, 2023, was edited the next day by user ‘@ Lataupefr,’ who inserted two articles from pravda-fr[.]com with sources being Russian-pro Telegram channels ‘@ BrainlessChanel’ and ‘@ kompromatmedia.’” 在脚注中，他们写道：“2023年12月22日创建的题为‘繁荣卫士行动’的维基百科文章，在第二天被用户‘@ Lataupefr’编辑，该用户插入了两篇来自 pravda-fr[.]com 的文章，其来源是亲俄的 Telegram 频道‘@ BrainlessChanel’和‘@ kompromatmedia’。”

Foreign Digital Interference

外国数字干预

The precise selection of these pro-Russian sources…proves there’s a real targeting effort to disseminate the strategic narratives… Given its technical characteristics, the processes implemented and the pursued purpose, this network constitutes foreign digital interference. 这些亲俄来源的精确选择……证明了存在一种旨在传播战略叙事的真正针对性努力……鉴于其技术特征、所实施的流程以及所追求的目的，该网络构成了外国数字干预。 —VIGINUM ——VIGINUM

Those words — foreign digital interference — are very important. 这些词——外国数字干预——非常重要。

The West has neglected to fight on the battlefield that has been right in front of them the entire time — the internet. 西方一直忽视了在他们面前一直存在的战场——互联网。

This week, we learned JD Vance and Marjorie Taylor Greene promoted a fake story by the Russian disinformation network — Storm-1516 — which is linked to the GRU and believed to employ workers from the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg operation that attacked American minds to help install Donald Trump in 2016 and whose output was promoted by members of Trump’s 2016 campaign. 本周，我们得知 JD·万斯（JD Vance）和玛乔丽·泰勒·格林（Marjorie Taylor Greene）推广了俄罗斯虚假信息网络“Storm-1516”炮制的一则假新闻。该网络与俄罗斯军事情报总局（GRU）有关联，据信雇佣了来自“互联网研究机构”（Internet Research Agency）的员工——正是那个在2016年攻击美国民众思想以帮助唐纳德·特朗普上台的圣彼得堡机构，其产出的内容曾被特朗普2016年竞选团队的成员所推广。

AI Models, Rewriting Wikipedia, and Laundering Content

人工智能模型、改写维基百科与洗白内容

As Atlantic Council reports in Exposing Pravda: How pro-Kremlin forces are poisoning AI models and rewriting Wikipedia: 正如大西洋理事会在《揭露真理报：亲克里姆林宫势力如何毒害人工智能模型并改写维基百科》中所报道的那样：

“Russia has expanded, developed, and tailored an influence camp…” “俄罗斯已经扩大、发展并定制了一个影响力阵营……”