Influence by Design: How Meta Accepted Russian Propaganda Payments Despite Sanctions

CheckFirst, Reset.Tech, and AI Forensics document how the Kremlin-linked Social Design Agency — subject to EU sanctions for its role in Doppelganger — exploited Meta's advertising systems to disseminate propaganda on Facebook and Instagram despite those sanctions. The investigation traces the ad approval process failures and documents the scale of reach achieved through the loophole.

Meta's failure to prevent a sanctioned Russian entity from purchasing advertising to distribute propaganda raises fundamental questions about the adequacy of platform self-regulatory mechanisms and EU sanctions enforcement in the digital advertising context. The findings fed directly into EU Commission discussions about DSA enforcement and the regulation of political advertising.