Russian propagandists exploited celebrity videos from the popular platform Cameo to support their misinformation campaigns, cybersecurity researchers at Microsoft said.
Starting in July, pro-Russia social media channels began circulating videos of American celebrities that were “deceptively edited to push anti-Ukraine propaganda,” according to a report published Thursday by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. According to the report, these videos of celebrities, such as boxer Mike Tyson and actor Elijah Wood, were obtained by an unidentified influence actor with ties to Russia. Cameo is a well-known website where people can pay public figures for personalized video messages.
The celebrities were apparently unaware that these videos were then edited in ways that appeared to attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Emojis and links are added by the unidentified actor to the brief video messages, which frequently show celebrities pleading with “Vladimir” to get help for substance abuse. The videos were shared widely by pro-Russian social media accounts and then further amplified by state-backed Russian media outlets, the report said, where they were inaccurately portrayed as messages appealing directly to President Zelensky.
US Embassy in Russia, although they refrained from commenting. Since late July 2023, there have been at least seven of these fictitious celebrity video messages used. Priscilla Presley, Dean Norris, Kate Flannery, and John McGinley were among the American celebrities who appeared in the videos alongside Wood and Tyson. Tyson had “zero involvement” with “creating such content,” according to a statement from his representative, and the videos of him that were going viral were fake. “Anything that is not part of his typical humorous cameo videos is being changed,” the spokesperson continued.
The videos were edited in some cases to make it look like they were interviews with news outlets or from a celebrity’s own social media account – and part of broader pleas to Zelensky to get help for a supposed substance abuse issue.
As per the Microsoft researchers’ report, “Russian state-sponsored propaganda and Kremlin officials have long propagated the false narrative that President Zelensky suffers from substance abuse; however, this campaign represents a novel approach by pro-Russia actors seeking to further the narrative in the online information space.”
A Cameo spokesperson told in a statement that the company does not publicly comment “on the details of its Trust & Safety investigations.” The spokesperson added, however, that these sort of videos “would violate Cameo’s Community Guidelines, and in cases where such violations are substantiated Cameo will typically take steps to remove the problematic content and suspend the purchaser’s account to help prevent further issues.”
