“What could still be considered believable”: the test that ran alongside a German election

Fake scandals hit every German party except two

Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany elected a new parliament on 6 September; preliminary results gave the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) 44 percent of the seats – three short of a majority, per PBS News. The vote had come with months of fakes around it: in June, Antibot4Navalny, an activist group that has tracked Russia’s Matryoshka operation for over two years, spotted fake AFP pages playing on divisions between eastern and western Germany, and in July came posts made to look like reports from German public broadcasters, accusing politicians of corruption and sex offences. Every party was hit except two – the AfD and the pro-Russian BSW, AFP reported.

By election weekend the claims had reached the ballots themselves. A one-minute video showed a man in white gloves crossing out postal ballots marked for the AfD – viewed about 10,000 times on X before DW’s fact-checkers showed it was staged: the ballots lacked the hole punch real German ballots carry, and all three named the same candidate. Other videos, under DW, ARD, WIRED and BBC logos, accused the CDU of cheating – campaign posts from dead residents’ accounts, postal votes registered to non-existent citizens; another post claimed postal votes were being counted before polls closed, when envelopes may only be opened early to prepare the count.

German intelligence attributes the staged ballot video to a network tied to Russia’s military intelligence, per the Leipziger Volkszeitung. For the wider campaign the public evidence is indirect but consistent: the methods, the narratives and the language errors all match Matryoshka’s earlier documented runs, which is why groups from France’s state agency Viginum to Antibot4Navalny attribute it to Russian actors. The measurable effect was small: Julia Smirnova of the Berlin institute CeMAS told DW that “the reach is mostly inauthentic”, pushed by fake accounts, with little real engagement.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, whose own logo was pasted on one of the fakes, documented the claims turning absurd in the final month – Berlin’s mayor accused of trying to murder a tennis player nobody had reported missing, a Left candidate in Saxony-Anhalt of killing his grandmother.

The UK wants YouTube to show more BBC in people’s feeds – the US calls that a censorship risk

The UK government announced plans in June to require YouTube and TikTok to make content from public service broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – prominent and easy to find in feeds and search results, which could mean boosting official clips from programmes such as Question Time. Ministers, the regulator and the broadcasters have framed the plan as an answer to growing misinformation on the platforms people increasingly get news from, and the government says it will consider legislating if platforms do not act, The Guardian reported.

The Trump administration objected in a submission to the UK’s consultation, issued through the US embassy in London on 7 September. Preferential visibility for government-preferred sources risks viewpoint-based censorship, the statement said, could set a template for authoritarian regimes to justify control over online content, and would cut a disfavoured outlet’s reach as effectively as outright removal – Washington said it would likely consider such a measure as “facilitating censorship”, and, per Deadline, warned of “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech” by Americans online. It also asked what safeguards would keep officials’ biases from disadvantaging independent journalism.

The UK culture ministry answered that the plan is still a proposal open for public comment, and that free expression and fair competition will be protected; government insiders say any measures would apply only in the UK. The US submission echoes YouTube’s own objections – its Europe vice-president told the Edinburgh TV Festival last month that compelled visibility would hurt the public interest and creators’ livelihoods. The US president is meanwhile suing the BBC for $10 billion over a Panorama edit of one of his speeches, and BBC board members have been advised to seek legal advice before travelling to the US.

“Ceuta is now Gaza”: the anonymous network amplifying Spain’s border crisis

More than 72,000 people tried to cross from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta on 30 and 31 July after a rumour spread online that the border was open. El País has profiled one of the biggest amplifiers of the aftermath: Estrategias Militares (Military Strategies), a Spanish-language network with 560,000 YouTube subscribers, about 190 million views and 70,800 followers on X, run anonymously.

The channels pair support for the Israeli government with the claim that the Ceuta crossings are a military invasion orchestrated by Morocco and facilitated by Pedro Sánchez’s government. El País lists the fabrications it found: an estimate of 100,000 crossings, well above official data; a scabies epidemic that Spain’s Health Ministry says has not occurred; a Moroccan declaration of war; and appeals for street action and for King Felipe VI to intervene. The network’s head denied to the paper receiving money from Israeli NGOs or the state, said the channels live off YouTube, Twitch and donations, and moved the X account’s stated location from Israel to Morocco after the paper’s questions.

Disinformation analyst Marcelino Madrigal describes the network as digital infrastructure aligned with Israeli operators and far-right channels; researcher Iago Moreno says such ecosystems are valuable to states because no direct link is needed. Sánchez said on 31 August that networks associated with Israel and Russia had spread hoaxes against Spain – the network’s head says that may refer to his channel. A poll published on 7 September asked Spaniards who they hold responsible for the crisis: 89% named Morocco, 74% the spread of disinformation on social media, and 72% the government itself, Reuters reported.

A Glasgow housing project burned after weeks of false claims about asylum seekers

Posts in local Facebook groups claimed that a housing block under renovation in Possilpark, Glasgow, was being turned into accommodation for asylum seekers. The building had stood empty for 20 years and is being converted into affordable flats with £3 million of public money; NG Homes, the housing association that owns it, says the homes will go to people on its ordinary waiting list. The rumours still drew two protests at the site, in July and early August.

On the afternoon of 6 September the block caught fire. The roof was destroyed, nobody was hurt, and Police Scotland is treating the fire as deliberate. After the blaze, some right-wing accounts shared images of the burning building and called it “migrant apartments”, the BBC reports. Local MSP Paul Sweeney, one of the politicians who secured the funding, said witnesses saw someone climbing the scaffolding shortly before the fire, and called the online claims lies spread to generate clicks.

At First Minister’s Questions on 8 September, John Swinney said Police Scotland will pursue not only whoever set the fire but also “those who were circulating information to incite this behaviour” – and even those celebrating the destruction, per Sky News.