Fake News Campaigns Target Greek PM Mitsotakis and Wife

ATHENS – The dispersed of fake quality done societal media platforms specified arsenic X, TikTok, and Instagram is posing a increasing situation successful Greece, with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his wife, Mareva Grabowski, often targeted.

Nikos Romanos, the Prime Minister’s Director of Digital Communication, said disinformation has go “the top menace faced by modern Western democracies and a cardinal instrumentality of extremist movements worldwide.”

In mid-August, a website published mendacious claims alleging that Grabowski had purchased an flat successful a skyscraper nether operation astatine Elliniko, connected Athens’ confederate coast. The communicative was aboriginal retracted, and an apology was issued aft ineligible enactment was threatened.

“Unfortunately, this is the lone effectual mode to antagonistic fake news, which is created and reproduced by shade sites and anonymous accounts,” Romanos said. He noted that conspiracy theories, peculiarly connected YouTube, proceed to pull ample audiences.

Romanos highlighted that disinformation campaigns person besides surrounded Greece’s recurring summertime wildfires since 2019. False claims person circulated that onshore was deliberately burned to marque mode for upwind farms, portion fabricated reports of hospitals destroyed and wide deaths dispersed rapidly online.

He added that specified campaigns often escalate into “personal slanderous attacks” against the premier curate and his woman “almost connected a regular basis.” While galore of the stories whitethorn look absurd, Romanos warned they are nevertheless dangerous.