Alliance4Europe

Report March 2025

Submitted
For the European Elections, Alliance4Europe convened a network that now consists of around 42 organisations and 130 researchers, fact-checkers, academics, and journalists. It was later named the Counter Disinformation Network and now consists of 47 organisations and over 200 participants from 11 EU and 5 non-EU countries.

 Network participants produced 37 alerts in 2024, sent out to government agencies, EU institutions, social media platforms, and advocacy groups. The Code of Practice Rapid Response System was utilized to flag the alerts which touched elections and the relevant platforms. 

 The members of the network managed to identify: 
 - 700 channels violating sanctions against Russian media or sanctioned individuals on social media platforms;
 
 - 611 influence operation ads not labelled as political or touching social issues at the time of posting;
 
 - 131 instances of unlabelled AI-generated images used by European political parties;
 
 - Identified an enforcement issue in enforcing Meta’s Ad policy towards Chinese state-controlled media
 
 - 1.6k Doppelganger tweets;
 
 - Over 800 organisations targeted by a Russian influence operation;
 
 - Approximately 99k violations against the French election silence period;
 
 - Two platforms' reporting systems fell short of their DSA obligations during the French elections;
 
 Our reports have according to members of the community contributed to:
 
 - The takedown of a network of inauthentic Facebook pages operated from West Africa, targeting France with unlabelled political ads;
 
 - Geo-fencing or takedown of over 100 pages violating sanctions against Russia. 

- The labelling of unlabelled political ads;

- Submission of evidence to EU institutions and national authorities;

- Over 40 meetings with officials from different EU countries and institutions raising our findings;

- Over 60 articles in the press, reaching over 2 million readers.

- Providing actionable intelligence to the Europan Commission, members of the European Parliament, the European External Action Service, and several EU member state government institutions on the EU, French, Romanian, and German elections.

- Connected smaller organisations with EU officials, providing expert voices a way into Brussels.
 A4E also provided over 70 researchers, fact-checkers, academics, and journalists with training on the use of the DISARM framework.

- Organised 16 workshops and presentations targeting a broad public, at least reaching 450 participants.

 The Code of Practice on Disinformation Election Working Group and the RSS are to be attributed to parts of the success of the network.

Download PDF

Elections 2024
[Note: Signatories are requested to provide information relevant to their particular response to the threats and challenges they observed on their service(s). They ensure that the information below provides an accurate and complete report of their relevant actions. As operational responses to crisis/election situations can vary from service to service, an absence of information should not be considered a priori a shortfall in the way a particular service has responded. Impact metrics are accurate to the best of signatories’ abilities to measure them].
Threats observed or anticipated
Threats observed or anticipated at the time of reporting: Alliance4Europe saw an increased use of AI in influence operations. We are also concerned about the uneven enforcement of sanctions by social media platforms, allowing influence operation actors to operate on social media, spreading their illegal content. 


We are also observing how anonymous accounts and CIB networks are still operating freely, engaging in influence operations while hiding their affiliations. 


- 700 channels violating sanctions against Russian media or sanctioned individuals on social media platforms.
 - 611 influence operation ads not labelled as political at the time of posting.
 - 131 instances of unlabeled AI-generated images used by European political parties.
- 1.6k Doppelganger tweets.
 - Over 800 organizations were targeted by a Russian influence operation.
 - Approximately 99k violations against the French election silence period.
 - Two platforms' reporting systems fell short of their DSA obligations during the French elections.
 - Serious attempts to manipulate the Romanian elections results through coordinated inauthentic behaviour trying to manipulate TikTok’s algorithm. 

Mitigations in place
Alliance4Europe is working to convene a wide range of civil society actors who can work together to on a systemic level analyse and tackle these threats. We have also reported numerous influence operations to the platforms and regulators, highlighting the systemic vulnerabilities being exploited. 

Integrity of Services
Outline approaches pertinent to this chapter, highlighting similarities/commonalities and differences with regular enforcement.
Measure 16.1
Alliance4Europe shared relevant information about cross-platform information manipulation, foreign interference in the information space and incidents via the CoP rapid response system and through our Counter Disinformation Network Slack Workspace.

QRE 16.1.1
Alliance4Europe has developed a one-page template to summarise cases, allowing readers to quickly get an overview of a case, the TTPs and narratives used, the impact, actions we have taken, and recommendations.


SLI 16.1.1
Nr of actions taken (total): 37.
Type of detected content: AI content, silence period violations, unlabelled ads, influence operations, CIB networks, sanctions violations

Measure 16.2
A4E has published 37 alerts that show the tactics and techniques employed by threat actors, showing how these change over time.


QRE 16.2.1
A4E has alerted affected platforms about the tactics and techniques we have spotted being used on their platforms, providing them with the tools they need to mitigate them.