Who's Afraid of Trolls? 1#
Casual summer edition.
Today, I am closing out the summer with some light content. We are going to look at some fake or stolen YouTube accounts operated by Russian trolls.
Let’s go!
Duong Quynh
“Duong Quynh” is a YouTube channel purportedly run by a Vietnamese woman by the same name, in East Asian fashion Duong is her last name and Quynh her first name.
According to the channel description, she is very into drawing and her videos reflect that, but recently she put out a series of Scott Ritter, Douglas Macgregor and Larry Johnson clips.
Prior to this flurry of uploads her channel had lain dormant for five months, so it appears she suddenly developed a keen interest in geopolitics or was hacked during that time.
Surprisingly, the answer is neither. The YouTube channel originally belonged to Elvis Souza, a Brazilian micro-influencer working as a bus driver for Nety Turismo.
Links to his Facebook and Instagram are still found on the channel.
According to his Facebook, the original name of his channel was “ÔNIBUS NA ESTRADA” and the link back to YouTube still leads to what is now “Duong Quynh”.
His profile picture on Instagram shows him holding a silver play button, an award for accumulating 100,000 YouTube subscribers.
Souza’s videos showing his day-to-day life as a bus driver are still available on the channel and you can also see the abrupt transition from his original content to the Duong Quynh videos.
Under the first drawing video a commenter remarks that the channel has been hacked, stating: “Another hacked channel, this is the sad reality of YouTube.”
Under a more recent video another commenter asks “Where’s the Nety guy?”, to which someone replies “He was hacked”.
As you can see, Souza’s channel was clearly hacked, but certainly not by a random Vietnamese woman looking to promote her art.
No, the Duong Quynh videos were stolen from somewhere else and uploaded by the trolls to lend authenticity to their spam outlet.
AEK Media
“AEK Media” is another channel that recently started publishing recycled content from Scott Ritter, Douglas Macgregor, etc.
Its content is similar to the previous account we explored, but this one was once a cooking channel. The woman who started the channel seems to have been Azerbaijani based on the video titles and comments.
The channel slumbered for eleven months before reawakening with a passion for geopolitical commentary.
As you can see, we are dealing with another hack. I don’t know what the channel was previously called, but “AEK Media” is likely a rebrand by the trolls.
They also uploaded a new profile picture and channel banner, both probably stolen from a preexisting channel.
Unlike the last one, this channel doesn’t have any social media links or stolen videos, hence there isn’t as much to look at.
Holy Finance
“Holy Finance” is a channel I first suspected to be set up from scratch by the trolls, because I scrolled for so long without finding any original videos.
However, when sorting by oldest I discovered I was wrong.
It turnes out the channel had a previous owner, who uploaded some creepy recordings of mundane objects around their home, such as her nails, the carpet and a charging cable.
Based on the nonsensical content it’s possible the creator is mentally ill or intellectually disabled.
While the titles are all in English, one of the videos shows a pack of antibiotics with Arabic text. The package was produced by “Winlet Pharma”, a Pakistani pharmaceutical company, meaning the uploader is likely from there.
As for the name, there is not a single financial video on the channel, just clips from various NATO-critical commentators. The brand and logo are likely reused from a previous troll campaign promoting crypto scams or get-rich-quick schemes.
Douglas Macgregor Today
“Douglas Macgregor Today” is not affiliated with the renowned former U. S. Army Colonel, it’s just another troll account.
By now you shouldn’t be surprised to learn it was once a Turkish sewing channel.
The banner advertises the channel as dedicated to “revealing the shadowy side of the American senate” and the description promises original recordings of senate hearings.
There isn’t a single video about the US senate on the channel, but trolls aren’t good at brand consistency.
WarZone Echo
“WarZone Echo” churns out the same spam as the other accounts, but it has a good channel name, as well as the best looking logo and banner, in my opinion.
Scrolling down the feed, you will find videos showcasing military tech from around the world, as well as readings of bad World War III fanfiction.
This might make you think WarZone Echo used to be a real military enthusiast channel, but the mentioned videos are narrated by computer generated voices, so they were almost certainly scripted by trolls.
As strange as it sounds, WarZone Echo began as a Brazilian Minecraft channel.
The channel stopped uploading Minecraft content eight months ago and lay inactive for four months before returning with three Vladimir Putin thumbnails.
Summary
Now that we have looked at some troll accounts, let’s finish with a few questions:
1. Are these accounts really operated by Russian trolls?
Yeah, kinda.
The people these troll outlets promote are regular guests on RT, Sputnik and other Russian state-media, their message is also one of Russian success and Western failure, so the campaigns are likely funded by Russia.
However, Russia probably doesn’t own any of these accounts, they just paid a third-party to upload X number of videos or generate Y number of views.
The accounts were first acquired by hackers and then sold to spam companies in poorer countries. If you buy ads for your crypto scam or subscribers for your channel, you will be hiring the same people.
2. Where do the trolls get their content?
They remix authentic content from the person they are promoting. They take a video from their Telegram or a livestream where they appeared and chop it into smaller clips.
They usually remove the background and replace it with something else, such as military stock footage, to hide the source. A sort of green screen.
Sometimes the person in the thumbnail only shows up for a little while, before an artificial voice takes over, pretending to be the host analyzing what was said, but it’s just text-to-speech.
3. Why don’t the trolls delete the original videos?
Good question, I think it’s because removing the old videos removes the “credibility” the channel has built with the algorithm and it would be like starting a fresh account.
A sudden deletion of the entire video backlog is also a red flag that the account has been hacked, increasing the risk of it being suspended or returned to the rightful owner by YouTube.
Stay in touch by following Disinfology on X.