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The Weaponization Of File Sharing Platforms

Widely perceived as a significant threat to liberal democracies, disinformation campaigns are believed to have impacted multiple election results and other societal changes in the past few years. Also known as information operations, these are organized attempts at influencing public opinion and action on topics ranging from health to politics, through coordinated attacks (inauthentic behaviors), which spread false information, or fake news.

In order to appear genuine, information operations must disseminate the same narrative across platforms, a task which requires a centralized place to generate, store and spread content. File sharing platforms that offer a free or cheap way to easily store and share content, are an ideal solution for this. In this report, ActiveFence features four case studies of such misuse, each with unique tactics, and different ways of using file sharing platforms in their operations.

Portrait of Gideon Freud, author on the ActiveFence blog
Gideon Freud

Gideon is a Senior Intelligence Writer at ActiveFence. He graduated from Oxford University in 2012, where he studied social and cultural anthropology with a special focus on the growth of political extremism in Europe. He joined ActiveFence in January 2021, and is interested in researching the development of national laws focused on regulating online activities.