Lithuanian “elves” hack the Kremlin’s algorithms and save Britain from fake news

Britain and other European countries are adopting Lithuania’s best practices for establishing specialized centers to respond swiftly to hybrid information attacks from Russia. Source: The Times

At the National Crisis Management Center in Vilnius, a multidisciplinary team of specialists who unofficially call themselves “elves” works around the clock to monitor and counter hostile disinformation campaigns by Kremlin trolls. The latest large-scale mobilization was prompted by the spread on social media of fabricated petitions and false claims about the supposed imminent deployment of nuclear weapons in Lithuania, which appeared immediately after aggressive threats from Dmitry Medvedev.

The Lithuanian center brings together resources from eleven ministries and agencies, as well as a network of independent experts, journalists, and volunteers working as a unified, networked defense. During periods of heightened threat, analysts have just 15 minutes to verify and neutralize new fake stories spreading online. To combat bots, specialists use not only traditional debunking and account removal through social media platforms, but also unconventional methods, such as deliberately “poisoning” the algorithms of platforms like TikTok to detect dangerous separatist and subversive narratives at the earliest stages, when they have only dozens of views.

The experience of the Baltic states has attracted the attention of British Prime Minister Andy Burnham amid a recent wave of unrest sparked by disinformation in the British online sphere. Leading researchers stress that the main vulnerability of Western democracies lies not in ideological sympathies toward Moscow, but in citizens’ deep-seated dissatisfaction with their own institutions of power.

Russian intelligence services have learned to skillfully exploit the real economic and social problems facing the public to foment chaos, turning popular anger into an instrument of geopolitical pressure—a threat that can only be countered through strong interagency coordination and reliance on verified facts.

Recall that Russian intelligence services previously tested Lithuania, launching a fake story about the creation of the “Klaipėda People’s Republic.”