#it'snotmyukraine. We have identified a Russian network of 2,000 TikTok accounts created to discredit the mobilization and the Recruiting office

At the end of July, the destructive #it'snotmyukraine was among the three most popular hashtags on the TikTok Creative Centre website. The numbers were impressive: 41,000 posts in a week and 10 million views — incredible results for a hashtag that didn't exist a month ago.

Imagine our surprise when a search on the platform didn't turn up any authentic profiles creating content on the topic. That's how our investigation began.

Today, we know for sure that hundreds of identical profiles on TikTok have been created with one goal in mind — to distribute videos about the misconduct of Recruiting office or actors playing Recruiting office representatives to the widest possible audience. We are not even considering the veracity of the videos themselves, as we are talking about 2,100 accounts that are trying to bypass the platform's algorithms and go viral among Ukrainians.

All of the accounts we found are stylistically similar, like clones: the same avatars and channel names, identical descriptions, and the same videos that each account uses to spam Ukrainian TikToks. They are administered by a Russian entity that also advertises online casinos in Russia, more on that at the end of the article.

We have collected all these accounts in a table. We hope that in the near future, all profiles (as well as the numbers or email addresses to which they are linked) will be blocked and removed from the platform.

In the meantime, we want to show how such farms work. And at the same time, we want to draw the attention of TikTok users to the characteristic markers that can be used to detect hostile information operations.

How does it work? Step-by-step instructions for Russian propagandists

Step 1. Create hundreds of accounts. This will require a large pool of mobile numbers, email addresses, or Facebook profiles (the three main ways to create a TikTok account). Theoretically, one person can easily create three different profiles. For 2000+ people, you will have to go into trouble.

Step 2. Choose unique IDs for your new accounts. You don't need to be imaginative — you can take something pretentious and add random numbers and symbols at the end.

An example of unique IDs used by a Russian bot farm.

Step 3. Choose an avatar for your account. Preferably something patriotic and abstract, with the flag of Ukraine or the coat of arms. Ideally, it should be a woman — the most stereotypical Ukrainian woman with a wreath, embroidered shirt, flag, or all of the above. You don't have to think too hard and can use the same image many times. By the way, Russian bots have been using such avatars for at least eight years (read more about the first identified ones in our earlier investigation).

Avatars used by a Russian bot farm.

Images can be zoomed in.

Step 4. Name the channel in the most patriotic, colorful, and emotional way possible.

Here are some options from this bot farm.

Step 5. Generate content. You can make staged videos, but it's expensive. You need to pay actors, cameramen, and so on, so to optimize your budget, you can collect the most emotional videos from anonymous telegram channels (you can ignore watermarks — their presence is even better, and they add "reliability" to the original sources). To prevent TikTok from blocking the video as unauthorized, comparing it to its database of debunked fakes, or marking it as containing scenes of violence (the promotion of such videos is limited), you can slightly edit it. For example, you can put a translucent image on top of it or rotate it diagonally. However, these "filters" will become a characteristic feature of the entire farm. But they will allow you to turn a few dozen videos into several thousand.

Here are examples of screenavers of the same videos on different bot farm channels.

Step 6. Be sure to include our hashtag in the description of the video to get into the trends. And you can add other hashtags along with it - with the names of settlements or win-win and popular ones like #Recruitingoffice, #PeopleAgainstRecruitingoffice, #lawlessness, #ProtestRecruitingoffice. There may be mistakes, but who will pay attention?

Hashtags used by the Russian bot farm.

Step 7. Set the frequency of feed updates. You can post about one video per day on each channel. You can post the same one. Ideally, you should increase the views under each video a little more with the help of your bots.

Step 8. Put the main thing in the channel description. In other words, in the best traditions of Russian disinformation, redirect your subscribers to the Telegram channel. After all, unlike a TikTok account, no one will block it. It is worth reminding you that Telegram is at the center of all Russian disinformation operations.

In the case of this farm, all accounts carefully redirected those interested to the "Renaissance of Ukraine" telegram channel. Created on 7 July, the channel posts "up-to-date information about Recruiting office, their actions and lawlessness. Useful tips and tricks", as well as calls for information to be sent to the bot and promises to create an up-to-date map with Recruiting office employees in different cities of Ukraine.

Sometimes, it also compares the 2014 Olympic Games in Paris and Russia. With the classic propaganda question, "Why is the West promoting this gayness and debauchery?"

Why are we sure it's the Russians?

First of all, because of their own mistakes. When you run many channels for different clients, mistakes are inevitable.

We noticed a completely different description in several accounts: "if ssblлка doesn't work or there is no TG: [name of a completely different Telegram channel]".

That's how we came across Mark Odintsov's channel, who describes himself as "the best community in the CIS" and posts allegedly win-win schemes for various online casinos. That is, where and how many times should you spin to get the jackpot? On Russian websites and forums, you can find dozens of negative reviews and even exposés of this Mark Odintsov in fraud and deception of naive users and fans of free spins (free spins in online casinos).

But the most interesting thing is that this Telegram channel is being advertised by another network of at least several dozen TikTok accounts - all of them start with workex and have the same description "if ssblack doesn't work or there is no TG: ...", and some of them even have the same avatar as Odintsov's Telegram channel.

In some of them, the name UA_Revival, a channel discrediting the Recruiting office, appears due to the same inattention.

So, there is no doubt that all these profiles are run by the same office.

What does this mean for us?

1. Russian disinformation is super active in TikTok — last December, DFRLab and BBC Verify already exposed their farm that spread fake news about ex defense minister Reznikov for Europeans. It was the first high-profile exposure of 12,800 Russian TikTok bots. Obviously, it will not be the last.
2. Even one poorly made, primitive Russian TikTok farm with 2,000 accounts, having guessed a hot topic, can collect more than 200,000 likes and receive more than 4 million views in a few weeks. The data from the TikTok Creative Centre page, where the hashtag has at least 20 million views, suggests that we have not yet found all the accounts involved in this operation.
3. A bit of optimism: at the time of data collection (25 July), some pages showed signs of deleted content, and some videos were hidden as containing scenes of violence, and thus, their promotion was also restricted by the platform. This shows that TikTok is still trying to fight against inauthentic behavior. But not as effectively as we would have liked, it took one person from our editorial team one day to find all these channels. And that was without any access to TikTok data, just using the web version of the platform and an advanced Google search. This means that TikTok's claims about its counteraction to infocampaigns and influences seem pathetic at the very least.
4. The most dangerous thing is that even though these videos look artificial and are not very credible, the hashtag #it'snotmyukraine has become a trending topic. This means that real users could start using it.

We continue to publish a series of materials on the role of TikTok in Russian information campaigns in Ukraine and the occupied territories. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.

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