Social Media Manipulation for Sale: 2025 NATO Experiment on Platform Capabilities to Detect and Counter Inauthentic Social Media Engagement

Social Media Manipulation for Sale: 2025 Experiment on Platform Capabilities to Detect and Counter Inauthentic Social Media Engagement is a new report recently published by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

“This sixth annual evaluation of social media, conducted since 2019, tests the resilience of major social media platforms against manipulation by commercial service providers. The experiment measures platforms’ ability to detect and remove inauthentic engagement that is commercially purchased for deliberately created inauthentic posts in non-political scenarios.”

Download the report here.

NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence has this to say about it on Linkedin:

???????????? ???????????????????????? ???????????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????? ???????????? ???????????? ???????????????????? ???????????????????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ????????????.

We have just released our latest experiment on social media manipulation, offering the most comprehensive evidence to date of how commercially available inauthentic engagement continues to exploit systemic platform vulnerabilities. Despite regulatory advances and improved enforcement, the study shows that manipulation remains cheap, accessible, and increasingly sophisticated, with AI-enabled bots now blending seamlessly into real conversations rather than acting as obvious spam.

???????????? ????????????????????????????????????????: in 2025 we tested seven major platforms by purchasing fake engagement and advertising, revealing that over 30,000 inauthentic accounts generated more than 100,000 interactions with limited detection. While some platforms improved account and engagement removal, commercial manipulation is still widely available at low cost, including within paid advertising systems. Most concerningly, AI-driven bots now embed themselves into authentic discussions, making manipulation harder to detect and more persuasive.

???????????? ????????????????????????????????????:
???????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????? ???????????????????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????????????????????????????: For a few hundred euros, actors can generate tens of thousands of fake interactions including through ads.
???????? ???????????????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????: Bots are shifting from high-volume spam to low-volume, high-credibility engagement inside real conversations.
???????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????????????: Enforcement has improved, but transparency and routine detection remain inconsistent across platforms.
???????????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????????: Cryptocurrency-based payment infrastructures keep the manipulation economy resilient and largely opaque.
???????????????????????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????????????????: Behavioural, cross-platform, and conversation-level analysis is now essential to protect information integrity.

???????????????????????? ????????????????: the infrastructure for influence-as-a-service is mature and defending the digital public sphere now requires systemic, financial, and behavioural counter-measures, not just content moderation.

Read the full experiment report below or follow the link in comment section!

Authors: Gundars Bergmanis-Korāts, Tetiana Haiduchyk, Bohdan Smolts
Trementum Research

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