Brutally awakened by the first bombardments, on February 24, 2022, near Kiev, the Reface team did not hesitate for a moment. The Ukrainian entertainment application, champion of “face swap” (the exchange of faces), and a real hit of the Covid era with 200 million claimed users around the world, has completely redesigned its toy in order to participate to the war effort against Russia. With his own weapons.
“Previously, Reface users used to transform into Jack Sparrow and Iron Man. Now we encourage everyone to transform into President Zelensky and animate their photos with the Ukrainian anthem,” explain its creators, in a short cyberresistance guide published on the Internet.
That’s not all. It is also possible to slip into the skin of a Ukrainian soldier – dozens of them, erected as heroes, are registered in the application -, or in that of a local song star. In short, anything that can fuel, on social networks, the patriotic flame against the invader. “We are Ukrainians, we are developing a Ukrainian product and we are living in a horrible war. We want to stop it, that’s why we are doing everything we can and using all available resources”, summarizes the co-founder of the app, Dima Shvets.
“We can spread the truth”
Even more valuable, Reface has also set up an information system with “push messages” relaying calls for donations and videos from the field to its users in Ukraine and Russia. “We disseminate the information that we see with our own eyes, as well as those confirmed by Ukrainian officials,” said Dima Shvets.
His method may appear derisory in the face of the missiles currently raining down on Ukraine. Nevertheless, more than 2 million “push messages” have been received since the beginning of hostilities, specifically in Russia, with montages compiling bombardments and other abuses of which Ukrainian civilians are victims. As well as incentives to visit to local gatherings, banned and suppressed by the police. An activism that is not to everyone’s taste: “Aggressive and intrusive propaganda. The application disappointed me and I deleted it”, reacts for example the user Skpetrichor on February 28, who assigns the note one star (out of five) to Reface. “Of course, we noticed that the amount of videos created and shared initially fell on the spot, but it is now stabilizing,” reassures Dima Shvets.
The most important is elsewhere. Unlike the Russian media, but also Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, Reface has the merit of not being censored on the spot. The very playful nature of the application has surely lowered the guard of the Russian regulator, allowing it to be always active and to continue to distill its messages in complete freedom. “We have no specific plan for the future, but we will continue to support our country with an information campaign until the end of the war, promises Dima Shvets. We have a huge audience and can spread the truth , since other social networks are slowed down.”