Blurs

Social-Media Accounts and Networks You Should Treat With Caution Social media has made it possible for almost anyone to publish something that looks like news. A profile can have a blue tick, a professional-looking logo and thousands of followers. It can call itself News, Press, TV or Monitor. It can repost the same story dozens of times until it appears to be everywhere. But appearance is not evidence. There is documented evidence of US-linked information operations and pro-Western coordinated activity, including operations that used deceptive social-media personas.  For example, Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika studied networks on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives. OpenAI reported that the operation generated articles and social-media posts, including political content relating to US elections. It also used apparently ordinary material such as fashion and beauty content, potentially to make the...

For almost six months, much of the story remained behind a wall of military secrecy. Then, in September 2026, one of the two American airmen involved finally described what happened. The story begins with an American F-15E Strike Eagle flying deep inside Iranian territory. Its two-man crew, known by their mission call signs Alpha and Bravo, were carrying out a strike mission when their aircraft was hit by an Iranian shoulder-fired missile. The aircraft was destroyed and both men ejected. But what followed was very different for each of them. Dude 44 Dude 44 is not the name of the pilot. It was the mission/callsign of the F-15E Strike Eagle and its two-person crew. - On 3 April 2026, an American F-15E, callsign Dude 44, was conducting a combat mission over southwestern Iran - An Iranian shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile struck the aircraft - The two crew members ejected and landed several miles apart - “Dude 44 Alpha” was the pilot. He was rescued after roughly six hours. - “Dude 44 B...

Scroll through Facebook, X, TikTok or Instagram and you can encounter hundreds of accounts presenting themselves as news. Some look remarkably professional. Others appear to be little more than a logo, a dramatic headline and a constant stream of political stories. They may call themselves independent media. Alternative media. Citizen journalism. Breaking news. But who actually runs them? Who owns the website behind the Facebook page? Who registered the company? Who are its directors? Who pays for the operation? Who controls the advertising? And are several apparently independent news outlets actually connected to the same people? In an age when a social-media post can reach hundreds of thousands of people within hours, these questions have become increasingly important. And surprisingly often, the answers are publicly available. The brand may not tell you much One of the easiest mistakes to make is to treat a media brand as though it were a person. A page might have a name suggesting ...