Instagram users are making ad money from Ukraine war footage, much of which is fake, Input.com reported. The accounts often start out as meme pages, or falsely claim to be run by journalists. The accounts have the potential to widely spread misinformation long-term, experts say. Loading Something is loading. On Thursday, just hours after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, the Instagram account @liveinafganistan, which had 218,000 followers, turned to @livefromukraine.It’s not a news outlet. Instead, it’s part of a group of similar accounts that have found a way to profit from the violence in Ukraine: Instagram ‘war accounts.’As first reported Friday by Taylor Lorenz for Input.com, accounts like @pov.warfare, @waraholics, @military_footage, and @livefromukraine can rack up hundreds of thousands of followers, and disseminate misinformation to people on Instagram.They often start out as meme pages, purporting to share footage of battleground military action in Ukraine, and some, Lorenz found, are falsely claiming to be run by journalists. “They are misinforming the public on a subject about which little information is anyway available,” Saif Shahin, a Tilburg University professor who researches digital media and culture, told Insider. And they’re monetizing the footage with some accounts posting advertisements on their stories or feeds, often for…
Read More












