OREANDA-NEWS. Services from Russia occupy a dominant position in the market for manipulating social networks, according to a joint report by experts from the NATO Advanced Center for Strategic Communications and Kharkov-based Singularex. “Russian services dominate the manipulation market in social networks. In fact, all the main software for manipulation and the infrastructure of the operators that we discovered are of Russian origin”, the report says.

As a rule, companies that provide manipulation services in social networks (MCP, Manipulation Service Provider) offer customers to buy likes, clicks, comments and reposts. Stratcom noted that the first MCPs appeared in Russia, and after the analogs were opened in Europe, although they often resold the services of Russian colleagues.

To check how well social networks can identify and combat manipulations, the authors of the study purchased promotion for 105 posts on Facebook, Instagram, YouТube and Twitter from 11 Russian and five European companies.