Cop28
Sultan Al Jaber — Cop28 president and CEO of a state-owned oil company — is “an ally the climate movement needs,” according to posts
An army of fake social media accounts on Twitter and blogging site Medium have promoted and defended the United Arab Emirates’ controversial hosting of a UN climate summit.
The President of the Cop28 climate talks is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the CEO of state-owned oil giant Adnoc, which has big expansion plans towards net-zero destruction.
Posts from fake accounts claims: “The UAE’s commitment to being the perfect host for Cop28 is a testament to its leadership in tackling climate change” and that Al Jaber is “the ally the climate movement needs”. Others have retweeted or reposted UAE government tweets or attempted to refute criticism. One account had an AI-generated profile picture, but the text identifying the picture as fake was not cropped.
The fake accounts were revealed in a Twitter thread by Dr. Marc Owen Jones of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, an expert on social media and Middle East disinformation. He described it as “a large, multilingual astro-turfing effort” involving at least 100 fake accounts and 30,000 tweets.
Sultan Al Jaber, whose presidency has drawn significant criticism at Cop28. Photo: John MacDougall/AP
Jones said analysis of tweets from a large sample of the fake account network showed that the most popular topic for advertising recently was Cop28. After Jones exposed the network, some accounts were banned from Twitter, but dozens transitioned their content to new usernames.
Jones said, “It is a network of fake accounts trying to promote UAE foreign policy.” They focus on promoting/greenwashing Cop28 by criticizing the launch of Cop28 in the UAE defend and fend off.
“These accounts pretend to be people they are not to give the illusion of broad base support for a position — it’s called astro-turfing,” he said. “It’s an act of deception, and if newspapers quote it, it means they’re definitely fooling people into thinking they’re real people.”
A Cop28 spokesman said: “These [fake accounts] are generated by external actors unrelated to Cop28 and are clearly aimed at discrediting Cop28 and the climate process.” The spokesman said the Cop28 office reported the issue on Twitter, asking for immediate action and fake Accounts reported directly through Twitter’s reporting form.
It is not known who runs the network. Jones said: “Attribution is very difficult. However, based on past experience, they are almost certainly a strategic communications company working on behalf of the UAE. That’s Occam’s razor: the most likely explanation.”
Data from Twitter on the number of accounts banned for links to state-sponsored information operations between 2018 and 2021 shows that the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the world’s worst offenders after China.
Al Jaber’s presidency at Cop28 has drawn significant criticism. French MEP Manon Aubry recently described them as “like a tobacco multinational overseeing the internal workings of the World Health Organisation”. Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres called his approach “dangerous” in May.
The Guardian said on Wednesday that despite denials, the oil company was able to see emails to and from the Cop28 office and was being consulted on how to respond to a Guardian query. Al Jaber’s team has also been accused of “greenwashing” Wikipedia.
In addition to being the head of Adnoc, Al Jaber is also the chairman of Masdar, a renewable energy company. He had previously defended his appointment, telling the Guardian in April that his business connections would prove valuable in ensuring the private sector takes the necessary action to tackle the climate crisis.
Jones identified the fake accounts based on evidence such as batch builds on the same dates, stock or AI-generated profile pictures, general formatting, language and post times, and lack of any other internet presence.
A first tranche of fake accounts was created in August 2021 and a second, larger tranche in February 2022. The accounts support other UAE policy goals including Sudan, technology, food and culture. But Jones said the most popular topic of late has been Cop28.
One account, @MahmudViyan, was allegedly a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates. It contained a profile picture in which the text “this-person-doesn’t-exist.com” was not cropped out, suggesting that the picture came from a website that generated AI photos.
9/ But the bottom line is the fact that whoever created it forgot to remove the “This person doesn’t exist” watermark at the very top.
(For those who don’t know, this person doesn’t exist. It’s a website that generates photo-quality faces with AI.) pic.twitter.com/BEQ8GsY1BG
— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) June 2, 2023
another account, @FadelYael, allegedly a space scientist living in the United Arab Emirates, had a profile picture that was also used by a cosmetic dentistry website. After Jones’ Twitter thread about the account, the username was deleted and the account and all tweets were moved to a new Twitter handle. @MissAhmadlyn.
Four reports allegedly came from US environmental workers living in the United Arab Emirates. Jones described her profile pictures as “incredibly sultry.”
12/ Another chilling development is the incredibly sultry group of American environmental workers who are either AI-generated or straight out of the same sci-fi novel. 2023: A mid-journey odyssey? pic.twitter.com/MqIovUaAv5
— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) June 2, 2023
After Jones exposed the fake accounts, dozens switched to new usernames and the tweets he highlighted were also deleted. “Whoever created this network is very aware that I tweeted this thread because they have now taken evasive action,” he said.
Some of the fake profiles have also posted blogs on Medium, including “Samantha Ali‘ who wrote a post in February titled ‘Sultan Al Jaber: The ally the climate movement needs for COP28 UAE’, which said: ‘Skeptics should stop bitching: Al Jaber is exactly the kind of ally the the climate movement needs.”
Other fake accounts have commented on this fake post. “Samantha Ali’s” profile picture is a stock photo and the same Medium account previously used the name “Joie Cooper.”
On the same day in February and with the same picture: “Asher Seal‘ wrote a post titled ‘Why Climate Activists Should Give Sultan Al Jaber a Chance’. His profile picture is an archive picture, which is described as a “handsome Syrian man at the train station”.
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