Fake social media posts defend UAE presidency of vital climate summit

An army of fake social media accounts on Twitter and the blogging site Medium have been promoting and defending the controversial hosting of a UN climate summit by the United Arab Emirates.

The president of the Cop28 climate talks is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the state oil giant Adnoc, which has major net zero busting expansion plans.

Posts from fake accounts claimed: “The UAE’s commitment to being the perfect host for Cop28 is a testament to its leadership in tackling climate change.” They also called Al Jaber “the ally the climate movement needs”. Others retweeted or reposted UAE government tweets or sought to rebut criticism.

One account had an AI-generated profile picture with text labelling the image as fake still visible.

The fake accounts were revealed in a Twitter thread by Dr Marc Owen Jones, of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, who is an expert on social media disinformation and the Middle East. He described it as “a large, multilingual astro-turfing effort” involving at least 100 fake accounts and 30,000 tweets.

Jones said analysis of the tweets from a large sample of the fake account network showed the most popular topic for promotion recently was Cop28. After Jones’s exposure of the network, some accounts were suspended by Twitter but dozens switched their content to new user names.

Jones said: “It is a network of fake accounts trying to promote UAE foreign policy. They’re focusing on promoting, or greenwashing, Cop28 by defending and deflecting criticism of having Cop28 in the UAE.

“These accounts are pretending to be people they’re not to give the illusion of popular grassroots support for a position – it’s called astro-turfing,” he said. “It’s an act of deception, and examples of newspapers quoting them means that they’ve definitely fooled people into thinking that they’re real people.”

A Cop28 spokesperson said of the accounts: “These are generated by outside actors unconnected to Cop28 and are clearly designed to discredit Cop28 and the climate process.”

The spokesperson said the Cop28 office had flagged the issue with Twitter, asking for immediate action, and directly reported fake accounts using Twitter’s reporting form.

It is not known who runs the network. Jones said: “Attribution is very difficult. But based on past experience, it’s almost certainly some strategic communications company working on behalf of the UAE.”

Data from Twitter on the number of accounts suspended between 2018 and 2021 for having links to statebacked information operations ranks the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as the worst offenders after China.

Al Jaber’s presidency of Cop28 has attracted significant criticism, with the French MEP Manon Aubry describing it as “like having a tobacco multinational overseeing the internal work of the World Health Organization”. The former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres called Al Jaber’s approach “dangerous” in May.

The Guardian revealed on Wednesday that, despite denials, Adnoc had been able to see emails to and from the Cop28 office and was consulted on how to respond to an inquiry from the Guardian. Al Jaber’s team has also been accused of “greenwashing” Wikipedia pages.

In addition to leading Adnoc, Al Jaber chairs Masdar, a renewable energy company. He has previously defended his appointment, and told the Guardian in April that his business ties would prove an asset in ensuring the private sector took the necessary action on the climate crisis.

Jones identified the fake accounts using evidence such as batch creation, stock or AI-generated profile pictures, generic formatting, language and posting times, and absence of any other internet presence.

Four accounts were supposedly those of female environmental workers from the US now living in the UAE. Jones described their profile pictures as “impossibly sultry”.

‘It’s almost certainly a communications company working on behalf of the UAE’ Dr Marc Owen Jones

Disinformation expert