A team of cyber-activists has launched a project called Torrents of Truth to fight Russian propaganda and spread the truth about the Ukrainian war. The idea is to use torrents as a way of delivering journalists’ reports about Russia’s invasion disguised as pirated torrents to circumvent Russian censorship.
In March, the Russian government encouraged Russian citizens to download pirated content from “unfriendly countries” by legalizing intellectual property theft in a bid to counterattack Western sanctions. This, however, created a loophole, which allowed Ukrainian journalists to disseminate information about what is really happening in Ukraine by camouflaging it as pirated torrents of movies, TV shows, software, music and books.
The journalistic reports were launched across P2P platforms popular in Russia, such as RuTracker, Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, and others.
“43 percent of Russians reportedly obtain movies and TV shows illegally, which means that about 62 million persons in the Federation of Russia are potentially exposed and targeted by our cyberaction,” according to the information on the project’s website.
At present, Torrents of Truth has bundled 21 torrents with its text and video, including new movie releases, the latest episodes of popular shows, and pro-grade software.