A stand hostess attaches a photo to a wall themed against Fake News at the annual re:publica conferences on their opening day on May 2, 2018 | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe’s failure on ‘fake news’ Sophisticated disinformation campaigns are running rampant as EU voters head to the polls, despite efforts to clamp down on such content.

European governments created "swat teams" to thwart fake news. The European Commission published rules on tackling disinformation. And Facebook opened a so-called war room staffed by 40 people in Dublin to stop the spread of false narratives online.

But despite this full-court press, voters still face a sophisticated online disinformation campaign as they head to the polls in this week's European Parliament election, the world's second-largest democratic exercise behind that of India.

The failure to halt misinformation, including hate-filled messages about immigration and Islam circulated widely on social media, underscores the limits of current efforts by policymakers and companies to manage what has become an issue in elections around the world — a phenomenon that caught people's attention during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and that has gained greater traction since in national votes from Germany to Brazil.

It also highlights the changing nature and increasing sophistication of these online campaigns, according to more than two dozen interviews with senior tech executives, national security analysts and politicians across Europe and beyond.

While foreign-backed groups, notably those connected to the Russian government, once played a central — and often public — role in spreading false narratives, the playbook is now shared by domestic extremist groups, state-backed entities and digital tricksters seeking to undermine voters' trust in democratic institutions.

In the build-up to the European Parliament election ending on May 26, manipulation efforts largely focused on so-called wedge issues like antagonism toward the European Union

The multiplication of actors now makes it nearly impossible to pinpoint who's behind the production and proliferation of false or manipulative messages online.

"There's still a lot of stuff that we need. We need to see more on fake accounts and bots, more on corrections, we definitely need to see more on openness to independent scrutiny," Julian King, the European commissioner in charge of security, told POLITICO. "We also have to be aware that those seeking to try and interfere are going to learn, change and evolve their tactics."

In the build-up to the European Parliament election ending on May 26, manipulation efforts largely focused on so-called wedge issues like antagonism toward the European Union, hatred of established political figures like France's Emmanuel Macron and the arrival of migrants across the 28-country bloc.

Analysts say it is difficult to directly link such disinformation campaigns with changes in people's individual voting habits. But with turnout in the European election expected to be low in many countries and margins between big parties razor-thin in places like France, where Macron's centrist party is neck and neck with Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally, even small effects on voting behavior could have a major effect on the overall outcome.

"Most disinformation is built on fact, and then manipulated to come to a different conclusion," said Mikael Tofvesson, deputy head of department at the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, whose team is tasked with countering foreign attempts to subvert democratic institutions, including during the upcoming European election.

"If you want to conduct an influence campaign, it will have a greater effect because of the relatively low turnout during the European elections," he added.

Focus on social media

It does not take long to find fake news online.

Within nationalist Facebook groups, Twitter networks and websites that cater to the extremes of domestic politics, on both the left and right, a mixture of anti-establishment, anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetoric runs rife. Content created in one country is often quickly translated and shared with, or borrowed by, similar groups in other EU states.

In Italy, that includes allegations that George Soros, the billionaire investor, wants to manipulate the outcome of the European elections. In Germany, extremist groups openly question if left-leaning politicians undermined the now-defunct Austrian coalition government, some of whose members were drawn from the far-right Freedom Party. And in France, far-right news aggregation sites routinely highlight the alleged crimes of African immigrants to stoke domestic division.

This week, more than 500 suspect Facebook pages and groups across the region were found to be sharing false narratives or using other manipulative tactics to promote either far-right or anti-EU groups, according to the campaign group Avaaz. In total, the fake social media accounts have garnered more than 500 million views since early 2019. In Germany, the public broadcaster ARD discovered a large network of likely automated Twitter accounts sending tens of thousands of pro-AfD messages.

To amplify the reach of such messages, political parties and their supporters track trending online topics, hoping to take advantage of breaking news — like the recent fire at the Notre Dame fire in Paris — to publicize their cause. Such tactics do not run afoul of social media companies' rules against promoting hate speech because much of this disinformation is based on the manipulation of facts, and is not viewed as outright fake news or illegal content.

Unlike traditional parties with existing national networks of supporters, fringe groups with limited political track records must turn to digital platforms to rally potential voters. They often blend political advertising, politicized news reports and social media rumors to attract the attention of the more mainstream population and news media.

Within this hybrid approach, it is often difficult to separate disinformation from legitimate political speech, according to Chloe Colliver, head of the digital research unit at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that tracks extremism online.

In response, European officials have demanded that social media companies do more to combat the spread of hateful and false content.

But industry executives claim it is not their responsibility to police online material, most of which — although repugnant to many voters — is not technically illegal. Social media giants also have teamed up with EU fact-checkers to debunk false reports on their networks, though such partnerships have so far had a minimal impact on challenging false narratives.

"We recognize that some people think we should remove everything," said Richard Allan, Facebook's chief lobbyist in Europe, who conceded the company has yet to publicly disclose any successful efforts it had taken to thwart digital campaigns focused on misleading European voters. "But we have concerns about removing everything during a political election."

Ties to Russia?

As Europe heads to the polls, policymakers and national security experts are frantically trying to judge if the wave of sophisticated disinformation now flooding the region can be tracked back to the Kremlin.

That task is proving to be maddeningly difficult.

In this new online world where nationalist and extremist groups use messages often associated but not directly in line with pro-Russian political views, discovering a direct link with Moscow is like finding a needle in a haystack, according to a senior official within the East Stratcom Task Force, an EU group tasked with tracking Russian disinformation. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing investigations.

Experts say Russian-sponsored groups have altered their tactics since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, during which they created their own false content to trick American voters.

Now, automated social media accounts, known as bots, with loose ties to Russia promote domestic political groups on social media, often championing both sides of hot-button topics like the United Kingdom's pending departure from the EU. The goal is to hide behind existing extremist users that have large followings across social media.

Within this void, sophisticated disinformation campaigns — both in the European elections and elsewhere — now thrive.

"Creating something out of nothing is really hard," said Ben Nimmo, a disinformation expert at The Atlantic Council. "It's a lot easier to amplify existing content."

Policymakers are struggling to deal with this new reality — particularly as some European leaders like Italy's Matteo Salvini are openly supportive of the Kremlin.

Current responses, including the European Commission's voluntary guidelines for social media companies on how to thwart disinformation, have yet to slow false narratives from spreading online like wildfire.

And within policy circles, EU lawmakers are torn between outsourcing the responsibility for policing digital speech to large tech companies and forcing Big Tech to take greater responsibility for what is posted on their networks.

Within this void, sophisticated disinformation campaigns — both in the European elections and elsewhere — now thrive.

"Lawmakers have dropped the ball," said Marietje Schaake, an outgoing Dutch member of the European Parliament who specializes in digital issues. "We're only at the beginning of understanding the challenges to liberal democracies."

Laurens Cerulus contributed reporting.