THE MAN WHO STOPPED THE BLUE WHALE HOAX IN BULGARIA ALL - 2017/6/12
THE MAN WHO STOPPED THE BLUE WHALE HOAX IN BULGARIA
An interview with Georgi Apostolov - by Andrea Angiolino
In the last few weeks the Blue Whale "challenge" changed from being just a hoax to an Italian emergency. A suggestive TV report by Le Iene on May 14th, followed by many sensationalistic newspaper articles, spread the news of a terrible "game" of death coming from Russia, that would lure children and lead them to suicide after 50 steps of self-mutilation and depression. Since then, several emulation cases were reported to the Italian police, together with many false alarms.
Georgi Apostolov is the Coordinator of the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre, established under the Safer Internet Programme of the European Commission. His declarations, as reported by Anne Collier on several posts, have been a fundamental reference to counter the fake new in Italy and abroad. More details from his very words follow.
Is the Blue Whale so-called "game" real, with its 50 terrible rules and its implacables tutors (or "kurators") blackmailing players who want to quit, forcing them to suicide instead?
There were some groups in the Russian Facebook - Vkontakte, visited by Russian teenagers, playing around with the theme of death and suicide. They hosted scary talk about kurators who were leading teenagers through various challenges in 50 days, the final step being suicide. Roskomnadzor, Russian telecom regulator, has been closing these groups. In any case, the online game led by shadowy people bringing teens to suicide is definitely an hoax.
On May 2016, an article on Novaya Gazeta was the first to describe this so-called "game", reporting a high number of suicides that happened on these discussion groups. What can you say about that?
These groups started appearing since November 2015: only one man in his 20s, Filip "Lis" Budeikin, was arrested under suspicion of being such a kurator, but no trial followed due to lack of evidence - he was just a member of these groups. He is still not charged.
And would appear possible that in almost a year no other suspects were found? Russian police and secret services are not known to be so inefficient, are they?
The Novaya Gazeta article reports a "fact", later repeated by some Russian media: in a period of 6 months (December 2015-May 2016) there were 130 teen suicides in Russia and 80 of those teens were members of such groups.
Even if this figure was true does it prove causality? Or would rather show how vulnerable teens were attracted to this "magic" subculture? Besides, Russia has always had a high number of teens committing suicide.
The author of this article is Galina Mursalieva. She has a bad reputation among other Russian journalists who are disgusted by her "investigations" and even say that she provoked the arrest of Budeikin by her sensational stories. They call her "Klikuchka" - from clickbait.
So no suicide has been caused by Blue Whale tutors?
We did an extensive research checking all Russian sources - from clikbait sites to journalistic investigations, official communication and authorities' sources, to find out all evidence. We perceived a picture of a self-driving hoax exploited by some individuals, such as the only one arrested psychotic man. Besides him, the authorities identified several teenagers using the groups who pretended to be kurators. It was kind of fun for them - to scare or to make fun of some peers.
In no case it could be proved that a teenager who killed him/herself was somehow coerced to do so by a stranger.
The web seems to be full of teenagers trying to join Blue Whale, posting the hashtags that would attract the attention of the tutors on them.
On March 10, the mainstream Russian newspaper Izvestia published an investigative story. There are several important points there.
Between October 2016 and February 2017, 232.000 unique uses of the known Blue Whale hashtags were identified in Russia. But the PR of the Russian social network Vkontakte - Evgenii Krasnikov said that they identified "tens of thousands of bots" posting with the hashtags, and not real people. Is the hype being intentionally exploited by somebody else besides the clickbait websites?
Sergei Grebennikov, head of the Russian Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies, identifies 3 types of users "besides the suicidal ones":
- users who are curious and try to find more about the trend;
- advertisers who are using the trend to promote their advertising campaigns;
- professionals who are testing technologies for information dissemination.
The article confirms that there has been only one arrest: The same Budeikin who was still not charged but was undergoing psychiatric screening..
So, authoritative Russian sources refuted the whole horror myth of a sadistic gang willing to exterminate youth in Russia and all over the world!
Budeikin was arrested in November 2016. Italian newspapers announced that on May 15th and 16th of May, 2017, as if it was just happened, and they quoted Budeikin's declarations that he "purified society" of "biological waste" pushing youths to suicide. What about that?
Budeikin's phrase about "biological waste" appeared in 15.11.2016 in a very "patriotic" Russian website claiming that they have interviewed him a few days before his. There are several interesting things there: Budeikin said that he has bipolar disorder - a condition that could lead to a megalomaniac syndrome. Then he denied that about 130 teens committed suicide, claiming instead thatthey were just 17.
References to "biological waste" quote reappeared on12.12.2016 in a publication on another website in the title of a story based on an interview with a high-ranking police officer. But it does not appear in the interview itself, therefore putting it in the subtitle is just manipulation. The policeman is very cautious and repeats that they need more evidence to put Budeikin to trial. He states that No other accomplices were identified
How did you react when the fake new about Blue Whale Challenge reached Bulgaria?
We had to lead a real cyberwar since mid-February after this sensationalistic story was inflated by a number of our clickbait websites creating a wave of panic among parents with titles like "Monstrous online game leading to teen suicides approaching Bulgaria" and other similar rubbish. The same happened in Latvia, Kirgizstan and some other countries neighboring Russia.
We decided not to initiate contact directly with the media since this would attract additional interest and could mislead the public into believing the story to be somehow true. As the hype was magnified by thousands sharing the story on the social networks, we just published a warning on our website and spread the link in comments under all shared in Facebook articles and posts. Then the mainstream media themselves started asking us for interviews and quoting our conclusions that it evidently was a hoax.
After our campaign in Facebook and in the mainstream media - commenting, explaining, and so on, the situation here calmed down in 2 weeks. And our Cybercrime police unit re-published our article on their official website - it also helped. It takes a lot of time and efforts to debunk but is worth doing - here in Bulgaria nobody remembers anymore about the hype.
What happened when some Romanian media took up the story again?
Five articles have been published in Bulgaria in one day, all based on a sensationalistic piece in the Romanian newspaper Gandul. But fortunately some of the Bulgarian media again referred to the position of our Safer Internet Centre and there has been no follow up at all, even from the clickbait websites. That means that our counter-campaign worked well and the topic was soon considered obsolete.
What did you fear when the newspapers pronounced the Blue Whale as a real threat?
In my opinion the real threat is that any teenager with vulnerabilities or suicidal tendencies could feel attracted to this tale and start replicating it by creating ad hoc online groups. We have had two such attempts [in Bulgaria,] but after reporting them to Facebook they were deleted. Another reason to fear is that emotionally disturbed youth who commit self-harm because of a family or school problem could try to hide the real problem by pretending to have "played" the Blue Whale. It is exactly what happened with a Bulgarian young boy, but after his mother spoke to our consultant and the police it came out that the boy had previously already cut his arms long before the Blue Whale story appeared.
Besides, it may bequite harmful should the fake news be fed up by Western media because then Russian and other countries' media will re-publish the stories and point at them as a proof that all this garbage is true.
The real mystery for me is how and why Western media continue digging into old and stinking Russian publications. Are they so stupid not to do a simple research into the sources, the stories and their authors?
Alas, in Italy your fears have become true. A summary of how the legend was born and what happened in our country has been written by Valigia Blu. What do you think about it?
It is a great article, the most detailed investigative piece I’ve seen yet.
Thanks a lot for your time. I conclude inviting our readers to read and follow the advices by our Polizia Postale. It is worth noting that they define Blue Whale "a practice that seems to possibly come from Russia" and the tutors "possible persons", not to confirm their existence. At the same time, police warn from the risk of emulations. And they never refer to Blue Whale as a "game".
I want to repeat my advice on this last point to parents, teachers, journalists. Do not call the Blue Whale a "game". A game is by definition a fictitious activity, where we pretend to do something or to be something else - and we know that we are pretending. We are free to join a game or not, and to stop or abandon it when we want if we are fed up of it. A game is separated from real life, set in precise time and space frames. It has an unpredictable outcome. Its aim is not to cause permanent consequences upon its ending, when we are back to real life. Even if it would really exist as it has been described, with persons that are deprived of their freedom and forced on a path of self-mutilation and suicide, Blue Whale would not be a game but an awful, criminal plagiarization. It would have none of the distinctive qualities of a game. Calling it a "game", one grants it an appeal that it does not deserves, arousing a curiosity that kids and teenagers should keep for real games instead.
Shouldreaders want to know more about Blue Whale in Italy, I had occasion to speak about it in two articles:
- http://www.famigliapuntozero.com/blue-whale-vi-spiego-perche-e-una-bufala/
- http://www.famigliapuntozero.com/blue-whale-ormai-e-psicosi-e-non-e-un-gioco/
and as a guest at Radio24 and Radio Cusano Campus.
Andrea Angiolino, eletto Personalità Ludica dell'Anno nel 2007.
Il Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione lo ha nominato Esperto inventore di giochi; nel 2004 haricevuto il primo dei Best of Show alla carriera dati da Lucca Games.
Giornalista, ha ideato vari giochi di ruolo e da tavolo, il più famoso dei quali è indubbiamente il sistema “Wings of War” (Nexus Editrice, con P. G. Paglia), che ha venduto mezzo milione di pezzi e oggi riappare come “Wings of Glory”.
Ha creato giochi per radio e televisione, per riviste, per pubblicità, per formazione aziendale, per eventi, per computer, per Internet.
Ha pubblicato decine di libri, tra cui il “Dizionario dei giochi” ed. Zanichelli (con B. Sidoti).
Le sue opere sono tradotte in una quindicina di lingue.