Climate and misinformation: a tweet campaign discredits the United Arab Emirates ahead of COP 28

Thousands of tweets touting the UAE’s environmental commitment ahead of COP 28 have been identified as coming from fake accounts.

While the perpetrators of this Twitter disinformation campaign have not been officially identified, it undermines potential work around COP 28.

Already the presidency is held by an oil tycoon…

You will probably be surprised to learn that misinformation is circulating on Twitter (no). But after political advertisements, or fake certified accounts among other feats of arms, it is now fake pro-United Arab Emirates (UAE) agents who have been raging for several months on the blue bird social network. Their goal is to praise the merits of the country’s environmental action, which is to host, from November 30 to December 12, 2023, one of the major global climate events, COP 28.

The country is already criticized for having placed Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, incidentally CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) as president of COP 28. In fact, you will understand that by entrusting the presidency of such an event to the leader of an oil group, we are bordering on an oil spill.

But beyond these considerations, it is a tech problem that brings the United Arab Emirates back into the news. Indeed, more than 100 Twitter profiles have been identified by various actors, including Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), a collective of non-governmental organizations tracking misinformation about climate change. They are accused of promoting UAE climate action without any real basis.

The profiles have in common that they are primarily identified as female, which has earned them the nickname ” american blondes “, because they generally claim American nationality while residing in the United Arab Emirates. More so, their profile pictures are considered to be either taken from image banks or generated using artificial intelligence. One of the photos tracked on Twitter by Marc Owen Jones, associate professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha (Qatar), also wore a banner indicating that the image had been created by AI. A researcher from the University of Exeter, England, specializing in computer science, Diego Pacheco, further told AFP that these profiles were all the more inauthentic » that the biographies written on these same profiles changed frequently as soon as they were reported.

Unsurprisingly, the organizing committee of COP 28 pleads not guilty

Reported to Twitter, which notably announced that it was increasing its fight against bots tenfold, the hundred or so profiles spotted raged for a long time, with no less than 30,000 tweets to their credit. The social network eventually suspended some, but others managed to escape the radar by changing their username and bio.

This new example of astroturfing does not come from the organizers of COP 28, according to a spokesperson for the event. He stated that ” these [faux comptes] are generated by outside actors unrelated to COP 28 and are clearly designed to discredit COP 28 and the climate change process “. He adds that the organizers of the event even took part in the campaign to report fake profiles on Twitter. Once again, take the time to check the information you can read, especially on social networks.

Sources: The Guardian, BFM TV