Each is a figment of BBC reporter Marianna Springs imagination. She created five fake Americans and opened social media accounts for them, part of an attempt to illustrate how disinformation spreads on sites like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok despite efforts to stop it, and how that impacts American politics.

Thats also left Spring and the BBC vulnerable to charges that the project is ethically suspect in using false information to uncover false information.

Were doing it with very good intentions because its important to understand what is going on, Spring said. In the world of disinformation, the U.S. is the key battleground, she said.

Springs reporting has appeared on BBCs newscasts and website, as well as the weekly podcast Americast, the British view of news from the United States. She began the project in August with the midterm election campaign in mind but hopes to keep it going through 2024.

Spring worked with the Pew Research Center in the U.S. to set up five archetypes. Besides the very conservative Larry and very liberal Emma, theres Britney, a more populist conservative from Texas; Gabriela, a largely apolitical independent from Miami; and Michael, a Black teacher from Milwaukee whos a moderate Democrat.

With computer-generated photos, she set up accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. The accounts are passive, meaning her people dont have friends or make public comments.

Spring, who uses five different phones labeled with each name, tends to the accounts to fill out their personalities. For instance, Emma is a lesbian who follows LGBTQ groups, is an atheist, takes an active interest in womens issues and abortion rights, supports the legalization of marijuana and follows The New York Times and NPR.

These traits are the bait, essentially, to see how the social media companies algorithms kick in and what material is sent their way.

Through what she followed and liked, Britney was revealed as anti-vax and critical of big business, so she has been sent into several rabbit holes, Spring said. The account has received material, some with violent rhetoric, from groups falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Shes also been invited to join in with people who claim the Mar-a-Lago raid was proof Trump won and the state was out to get him, and groups that support conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Despite efforts by social media companies to combat disinformation, Spring said theres still a considerable amount getting through, mostly from a far-right perspective.

Gabriela, the non-aligned Latina mom whos mostly expressed interest in music, fashion and how to save money while shopping, doesnt follow political groups. But its far more likely that Republican-aligned material will show up in her feed.

The best thing you can do is understand how this works, Spring said. It makes us more aware of how were being targeted.

Most major social media companies prohibit impersonator accounts. Violators can be kicked off for creating them, although many evade the rules.

Journalists have used several approaches to probe how the tech giants operate. For a story last year, the Wall Street Journal created more than 100 automated accounts to see how TikTok steered users in different directions. The nonprofit newsroom the Markup set up a panel of 1,200 people who agreed to have their web browsers studied for details on how Facebook and YouTube operated.

My job is to investigate misinformation and Im setting up fake accounts, Spring said. The irony is not lost on me.

Shes obviously creative, said Aly Colon, a journalism ethics professor at Washington & Lee University. But what Spring called ironic disturbs him and other experts who believe there are above-board ways to report on this issue.

By creating these false identities, she violates what I believe is a fairly clear ethical standard in journalism, said Bob Steele, retired ethics expert for the Poynter Institute. We should not pretend that we are someone other than ourselves, with very few exceptions.

Spring said she believes the level of public interest in how these social media companies operate outweighs the deception involved.

The BBC experiment can be valuable, but only shows part of how algorithms work, a mystery that largely evades people outside of the tech companies, said Samuel Woolley, director of the propaganda research lab in the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas.

Algorithms also take cues from comments that people make on social media or in their interactions with friends both things that BBCs fake Americans dont do, he said.

Its like a journalists version of a field experiment, Woolley said. Its running an experiment on a system but its pretty limited in its rigor.

From Springs perspective, if you want to see how an influence operation works, you need to be on the front lines.

Since launching the five accounts, Spring said she logs on every few days to update each of them and see what theyre being fed.

I try to make it as realistic as possible, she said. I have these five personalities that I have to inhabit at any given time.

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Thousands of miles away, a heavily-armed U.S. Coast Guard cutter sailed up to a fleet of a few hundred Chinese squid-fishing boats not far from Ecuadors Galapagos Islands. Its mission: inspect the vessels for any signs of illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing.

Boarding ships on the high seas is a perfectly legal if little-used tool available to any sea power as part of the collective effort to protect the oceans threatened fish stocks.

But in this case, the Chinese captains of several fishing boats did something unexpected. Three vessels sped away, one turning aggressively 90 degrees toward the Coast Guard cutter James, forcing the American vessel to take evasive action to avoid being rammed.

For the most part they wanted to avoid us, said Coast Guard Lt. Hunter Stowes, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer on the James. But we were able to maneuver effectively so that we were safe the entire time.

Still, the high-seas confrontation represented a potentially dangerous breach of international maritime protocol, one the U.S. sees as a troubling precedent since it happened on the Coast Guards first-ever mission to counter illegal fishing in the eastern Pacific.

The Associated Press reconstructed details of the never-before-reported incident from the Coast Guard and six U.S. non-military officials who spoke of the operation in greater detail but requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing a multilateral process seeking to force China to sanction the vessels. While diplomats in China accused the Americans of acting improperly, they didnt provide their own detailed account.

The Coast Guards unprecedented voyage was prompted by growing alarm from activists and governments in Latin America over the activities of Chinas distant water fishing fleet, the worlds largest. Since 2009, the number of Chinese-flagged vessels spotted fishing in the south Pacific, sometimes for months at a time, has surged eightfold, to 476 last year. Meanwhile, the size of its squid catch has grown from 70,000 tons to 422,000 a level of fishing that some scientists fear is unsustainable even for a resilient species.

As revealed in an AP-Univision investigation last year, the Chinese flotilla includes some of the seafood industrys worst offenders, with long records of labor abuse, illegal fishing and violations of maritime law. But theyre being drawn to the open ocean around the Americas where the U.S. has long dominated after depleting fish stocks closer to home and fueled by an increasingly fierce race between the two superpowers to secure access to the worlds dwindling natural resources.

The illegal fishing patrol, which took place over 10 days in August, was initially kept quiet. The Coast Guard, more than a month later, released a brief statement celebrating the mission along with photos from two ships it did manage to successfully board. But it made no mention of the three that ran away or gave any clue to the vessels nationality a posture the Coast Guard maintained in its conversations with the AP.

But the incident didnt go unnoticed in China.

Within days, Beijing fired off a formal written protest, according to the U.S. officials. Additionally, the issue was raised when U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns was summoned by Chinas foreign ministry for an emergency meeting over Speaker Pelosis visit to Taiwan, one of the officials said.

Chinas foreign ministry told the AP that it has zero tolerance for illegal fishing and said it was the U.S. that is flouting international norms by carrying out unauthorized inspections that dont follow COVID protocols, potentially putting seafarers lives at risk.

The behavior of the United States is unsafe, opaque and unprofessional, the foreign ministry said in a statement to the AP. We demand that the U.S. side stop its dangerous and erroneous inspection activities.

The Coast Guard disputes that assertion, saying all members of the boarding team, in addition to being vaccinated, were wearing masks, gloves and long sleeves.

The Biden administration also reported possible violations discovered on the two boats it did inspect to the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, or SPRFMO, a group of 16 members including China and the U.S. charged with ensuring sustainable fishing in 53 million square kilometers of ocean.

One of the most serious accusations is against the Yong Hang 3, a refrigerated cargo vessel used to transport fish back to China so that smaller vessels can stay on the water for longer periods. The vessel was among those that ran from the Coast Guard patrol, disobeying direct orders to cooperate from maritime authorities in Panama, to which the vessel was flagged. To obscure activities, some vessels, especially refrigerated cargo vessels, often fly under other flags but are named, managed and docked in China.

Ultimately, if history is any guide, Chinas communist government is unlikely to punish a fleet of 3,000 distant water fishing vessels it views as an extension of its growing naval prowess and promotes with generous state loans and fuel subsidies.

The Coast Guards patrol was meticulously planned, according to Lt. Stowes. The United States warned fisheries officials more than a year ago that it intended to conduct boardings in the area and filed papers showing pictures of the badges the crew would be carrying as well as the blue-and-white checkered flag the cutter would be hoisting. Five other countries, including Chile and New Zealand, have filed similar paperwork under rules allowing members fishing in the south Pacific to inspect each others vessels.

Just our being out there and doing the boardings really makes a statement, Stowes said.

At-sea inspections are considered a vital tool to verify that fishing vessels are following rules regarding the use of forced labor, environmentally hazardous gear and the targeting of threatened species such as sharks.

China has repeatedly blocked efforts to strengthen inspection procedures in the south Pacific. The most recent stonewalling took place last year, when China argued that fishermen would be at risk if at-sea patrols were allowed to carry firearms.

Rules adopted unanimously in 2011 are guided by a 1995 United Nations treaty, known as the Fish Stocks Agreement, that allows inspectors to use limited force to stay safe.

In a sign of how geopolitical rivalry may be escalating since the Pacific incident, one official told AP that the State Department sent a sternly-worded diplomatic note reminding Beijing of its international obligations as well as the distant water fleets long track record of labor abuses and violations.

The Biden administration is also weighing whether it will seek to have the vessels blacklisted for illegal fishing and banned from returning to the south Pacific at an upcoming meeting in Ecuador of the fishing management organization.

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This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Goodman reported from Miami. Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.