“Happy wedding day, my love <3. You are the best role model for six children."
Thus Liz Dotcom praises her husband in an Instagram post published on January 20. It is accompanied by a video of Liz Dotcom kissing a small child in her arms, a beautiful sunset in the background.
In the foreground is the object of the praise, a large man.
Unelmaisä is a millionaire of Finnish background Kim Dotcomwhose extradition the United States is demanding due to a lawsuit related to online piracy.
Dotcom has been distributing fake news to his 1.5 million followers on the messaging service X for years.
This story tells about how Dotcom has turned into an opinion influencer who dilutes Russian propaganda. The expert describes him to as a “super spreader” of conspiracy theories.
A millionaire hacker does all this on the other side of the world in his home in New Zealand.
Just two days after his wife’s social media congratulations, Kim Dotcom published a message on his social media account: The US Central Intelligence Service CIA is planning a sabotage attack on Ukraine.
The post is from the message service X on January 22, 2024. The message, which has collected well over two million views, goes like this:
Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhnyi is fired and replaced by a CIA favorite, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence.
He’s crazy enough to blow up a nuclear power plant. The reason for the attack is blamed on Russia and the propaganda media sells the story to the public. This is how NATO gets the justification to send troops to Ukraine.
This is an example of the pro-Russian lies that Dotcom is spreading on social media.
This is disinformation, i.e. false information, which is used to try to influence the opinions of others. Dotcom did not provide any evidence for his claim.
Ukraine said at the beginning of February that Zalužnyi has been fired. The commander of the ground forces and not the head of military intelligence was appointed as the new commander of the armed forces.
“The most classic disinformation spread”
Dotcom has probably noticed rumors related to the Ukrainian commander from Russian-language Telegram channels, estimates a social media and disinformation expert Pekka Kallioniemi.
– Then he has attached to it a blatant lie about the attack on the nuclear power plant. This is the classic form of spreading disinformation, says Kallioniemi. He has worked as a researcher at the University of Tampere.
Like Ukraine, Kallioniemi itself has also fallen into Dotcom’s clutches.
Kallioniemi maintains the Vatniksoup project in the message service X, the aim of which is to raise awareness of the Kremlin’s propaganda and the parties spreading it.
Last spring, he highlighted Kim Dotcom’s pro-Russian messaging. Dotcom accused Kallioniemi of online bullying and threatened to sue him.
In the end, there was no lawsuit. Dotcom was content to block Kallioniemi in the X service.
In the video below, Kallioniemi tells what motivates him in exposing Russian disinformation.
Kallioniemi says that Dotcom has spread the Kremlin’s traditional lies, according to which Ukraine was under Nazi control and that the 2014 revolution was organized by the CIA.
– His posts are strongly on the side of conspiracy theories. They are extreme. They mostly arouse amusement in me, Kallioniemi says.
In January, Dotcom shared a meme posted by the Russian Embassy in South Africa. It mocks Ukraine and the Leopard tanks donated by Western countries, which have been destroyed by Russia.
Ökyelämä and request for extradition to the United States
Kim Dotcom, 50, is known for her lavish lifestyle. He lives in a mansion in the foothills of Queenstown on the South Island of New Zealand.
Dotcom’s mother is Finnish and his father is German. The millionaire’s original surname is Schmitz.
When he was younger, Dotcom enjoyed himself in the company of model girls and participated in various adventures such as the Gumball 3000 celebrity rally. In Germany, a television series is being made about his colorful life, he says The Hollywood Reporter.
Today, Kim Dotcom has six children, five of which are from a previous marriage.
Dotcom’s social media seems ambivalent. In X, a man distributes propaganda. On Instagram, he presents an idyllic family life and jokes around.
Even in several family photos, Dotcom’s interest in cool arcade games can still be seen. In the pictures, he or family members pose in a helicopter, in front of a private plane or with cars and ATVs.
Dotcom became a multimillionaire in 2005 with the help of the file sharing service Megaupload.
Users of the service were able to share, for example, music and movies with each other for free, so that the artists were left completely without compensation. The service was shut down by the United States due to copyright violations in 2012.
For this reason, Dotcom has been the subject of a legal dispute for more than ten years.
According to American prosecutors, Megaupload generated at least $175 million in membership fees and advertising revenue.
Dotcom denies any wrongdoing and claims he was not responsible for Megaupload’s users – even though the illegal activity took place on the service he ran.
The New Zealand Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Dotcom can be extradited to the United States. Dotcom has appealed the decision, and the matter has not been finally resolved.
sent several interview requests to Dotcom, but they have not been answered.
The photo taken in 2012 shows the mansion formerly owned by Kim Dotcom, with the Finnish flag raised on the flagpole.
The New Zealand police raided the mansion in the same year. Nowadays, Dotcom’s family lives in a different place.
The “super spreader” of social media
In addition to messages related to the war in Ukraine, Kim Dotcom has also planted other claims and lies on social media, especially about the actions of the United States.
Among other things, Dotcom has spread the controversial claim that the coronavirus that caused the pandemic was developed in a laboratory in China with funding from the United States.
The same topics are also spread by many radical right-wing actors operating online.
Dotcom digests lies almost every day, and he seems to invent some of them on his own, researcher Pekka Kallioniemi estimates. According to him, Dotcom can be characterized as a so-called “super spreader”.
– Superspreaders are huge accounts that often spread disinformation. He is also very anti-American, says Kallioniemi.
He estimates that the behavior is partly due to Dotcom’s grudge against the United States because of the Megaupload lawsuit.
According to Kallioniemi, similar super spreaders can be found, among other things Donald Trump from the supportive Maga team. Superspreaders closely follow the topics on the surface and rarely stick to one theme for long.
Now, for example, the war between Israel and Hamas and the US presidential election are talked about. Dotcom has also presented his thoughts on the elections at the end of the year.
Russia interested in Dotcom’s messages
Russian representatives have taken advantage of Kim Dotcom’s lies about the war in Ukraine.
For example, in the fall of 2022, Dotcom seized on the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions that occurred off Denmark.
Dotcom concocted that the then British Prime Minister Liz Truss would have sent the following text message to the US Secretary of State right after the explosions: “It’s done”. The post published in the messaging service X can be seen below:
Later, spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova demanded an explanation from Britain. The claim was based on Dotcom’s social media message.
Russia exploits people like Dotcom in its propaganda, estimates a researcher familiar with disinformation Niko Pyrhönen from the University of Helsinki.
– I don’t think that Kim Dotcom is by any means the only person to whom Russia does this. Russia mainly takes advantage of the situation when such an opportunity arises, Pyrhönen reflects.
Most of the super distributors only receive advertising income from social media, Pekka Kallioniemi estimates. He does not believe that, for example, the Kremlin would direct money to a large number of social media influencers opposed to the United States.
According to Pyrhönen, it seems that Dotcom is baking disinformation into his messages, because this makes claims more raffled.
In the background, there is a psychological phenomenon related to social media, which is called rage farming in English. In Finnish, it could mean sowing rage, says social media expert Kallioniemi.
The phenomenon suggests that content that evokes strong negative emotions causes users to react. It, in turn, further increases the attention the content receives thanks to social media algorithms.
– Many of the biggest social media accounts play with this psychological mechanism, says Kallioniemi.
Sources for story opening image: Dotcom’s mansion in Coatsville, Auckland on 23 January 2012, David Rowland/EPA, Dotcom and reporters at the courthouse in Auckland on 22 February 2012, David Rowland/EPA.
Photos of Dotcom’s former mansion: David Rowland/EPA.