Network of VK Pages Blitzes Platform with Posts Promoting AI Essay-Writing Services
The pages appear linked to a Cyprus company and posted more than 200,000 times in the last year
TLDR
A network of 32 VK pages has posted over 200,000 times promoting EditaPaper, an essay-writing service that likely uses generative AI to produce its products.
EditaPaper-related posts started in October 2024, with related pages posting directly via VK. As of June 2025, the pages began using VK’s API, allowing them to post at a much higher frequency.
An analysis of mentions revealed that posts about EditaPaper appeared to be constant throughout the day.
Background
An essay-writing service called EditaPaper, which likely uses AI to write essays it sells, is using a network of automated, public-facing VK pages to post AI-generated advertisements of its offerings at massive scale.
VK is a Russia-based social media site similar to Facebook, with private individual accounts and public-facing pages for businesses, news outlets, and public figures as well as built-in messaging capabilities.1 According to VK’s numbers, the platform has nearly 100 million monthly active users (this number remains unverified).2 Though VK’s user base is primarily Russian, the platform is also used globally, predominantly in other formerly-Soviet countries. Over the years, the platform has become increasingly entangled with the Russian state.3 (We have previously reported on French extremists issuing threats against judges on VK.)
Open Measures identified 32 EditaPaper-affiliated VK pages that published more than 200,000 posts promoting the group’s services in one year (from Aug. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2025). The majority of these posts are in English, with occasional posts in other languages.
Educators have expressed their growing concerns about the role of AI in the classroom, particularly around essay-writing — namely, that the technology can enable cheating and lead to superficial learning.4
What is EditaPaper?
EditaPaper markets itself as a “Professional Writing and Proofreading Service” that allows customers to commission academic essays. The EditaPaper website appears to consider inputs such as academic level (for instance, high school vs. masters-level), “essay type” (choices include “business plan”, “research proposal”, and “capstone writing”), turnaround time, and number of pages.
While EditaPaper’s website does not explicitly mention the use of AI (in fact, they indicate that they have writers on standby), its promotional posts on VK are certainly AI-generated; in fact, many of these posts are published on VK pages with names like “AI RESEARCH PAPER GENERATOR.” EditaPaper’s services are relatively inexpensive — for example, a two-page “reflective essay” written at an early undergraduate level with a seven day turnaround time costs $35.02 USD — and the products come with a “plagarism-free guarantee.”
According to WHOIS data, the EditaPaper domain was registered in December 2017, suggesting the service has been around for several years.5 EditaPaper’s website indicates that its parent company is the Cyprus-based Forpio Limited. Forpio is linked to at least two additional essay-writing services named Dissertationary and EssayAssist.
EditaPaper on VK
EditaPaper Posts
Many of the posts we identified mentioning EditaPaper are written as “example essays” used to entice prospective clients. Additionally, every post we reviewed was unique and not replicated on any of the other EditaPaper-linked pages.
The 32 public VK pages we identified have posted over 200,000 times mentioning EditaPaper. Though not every post these pages made mentioned the service, the posts that didn’t were similar to those that did (though they do not appear to be promoting any other service). To illustrate the proportion of posts mentioning EditaPaper out of each page’s total posts, we created pie charts for a sample of four VK pages. Each pie chart filters by page name (using the query author:[insert page name]) and displays a “slice” showing EditaPaper mentions (by using the prompt text:editapaper).
For each of the four pie charts, our researchers gathered all posts from each page from Aug. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30, 2025 (slightly more than a year). Roughly a quarter to a third of the total posts by each surveyed page mentioned EditaPaper.
EditaPaper-linked Pages
EditaPaper’s first mention on VK occurred on Oct. 28, 2024, made by 11 public VK pages with names such as “AI ESSAY AND PAPER MAKER” and “ESSAYS AND ARTICLES AI CO-WRITER.” Over time, the network of pages posting about EditaPaper expanded to 32 pages.
The first batch of the 32 VK pages we identified were created in late August 2024; at the time of writing, the latest pages were created in early July 2025.
Though the first VK pages were created in August 2024, the network did not start posting about EditaPaper until October. This may indicate a degree of planning and staging for this operation. Subsequent pages began posting soon after their creation.
Operational Scaleup
After a brief period of posting following the start of operations in October 2024, EditaPaper mentions stopped at the end of 2024. This lasted until June 2025, when the VK pages we identified began posting about EditaPaper again on a much larger scale.
Using the Timeline feature in Open Measures’ dashboard, our researchers visualized the number of posts mentioning EditaPaper on VK using the query text:editapaper.
In the four-week period from Oct. 28, 2024, through Nov. 25, 2024, more than 1,400 posts mentioned EditaPaper; by contrast, in the four-week period from Sept. 1, 2025, through Sept. 29, 2025, it was mentioned more than 100,000 times.
Interestingly, though perhaps unsurprisingly, this trend also seems to correspond to a change in how these pages posted. Using the post_source.type field in the Open Measures VK dataset, we are able to gain insight into the manner in which content is posted to VK, with the primary options being API, RSS, and VK (meaning directly via the platform).
Using this methodology, our researchers found that the EditaPaper-associated pages we identified posted directly via VK’s platform through October and November 2024. In December 2024, the pages briefly experimented with using VK’s API before going dormant. An API (or Application Programming Interface) is a feature allowing software to communicate directly with a platform to facilitate certain actions (such as automated posting).
When the EditaPaper-linked pages returned to posting in mid-2025, they had entirely shifted to using the API, with some brief flirtations with RSS in the ensuing months.
The shift towards VK’s API suggests an operational scaleup with an emphasis on automation. The use of a network of pages may suggest that those making the EditaPaper posts were aware of — and sought to avoid — VK’s rate-limiting restrictions. Looking out for similar changes could be a useful tool for researchers identifying similar campaigns in the future.
Posting Hours
Our researchers assessed when the VK pages tended to make posts promoting EditaPaper throughout the day, using the two-week window of Sept. 7, 2025, through Sept. 20, 2025, as a sample.
We first gathered our data using the Open Measures Timeline feature, once again searching our VK dataset with the query text:editapaper. From there, the tool allowed us to break down posts by the hour over the time period we chose. Downloading the data and processing it with additional tools resulted in the graph below, showing an hourly distribution of EditaPaper mentions on VK during our two-week period.
During this timeframe, we found that the VK pages we identified posted about EditaPaper regularly throughout the day, regardless of the hour, and at incredibly high volumes.
AI Use in Posts
The posts we found advertising EditaPaper on VK were somewhat formulaic, often perplexing, and occasionally incoherent. Many also appeared to be AI-generated.
For instance, an Oct. 31, 2024, post from the VK page “COMPARE AND CONTRAST ESSAY” inexplicably starts with:
Lo and behold, my dear readers! 🤩 Today, we’re tackling a pressing issue that affects us all - the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.
The post continues with a reminder to readers:
And, of course, let’s not forget the role that organizations like EDITAPAPER can play in this fight. 🙌 By providing high-quality, evidence-based resources and support, they can empower individuals and communities to take meaningful action and make a real difference. 💪 .
An Oct. 7, 2025, post on a VK page with the slug “bestaigeneratorforwriting” (the name of the page is in Chinese: 最佳写作人工智能生成器) states:
ESSAY ABOUT HOW DOES TROY’S WRITING STYLE DIFFER FROM OTHER CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS? - EXAMPLE IN ENGLISH
Introduction
As a team of academic writers at EditaPaper, we believe that understanding the unique writing styles of contemporary authors is a crucial endeavor, especially for students seeking to expand their literary horizons. In this essay, we will delve into the distinct qualities that define Troy’s writing style and how it sets him apart from his peers in the literary landscape.
The “Troy” the post refers to is never identified.
The vast majority of the posts we identified were written in English, though we also found posts in other languages, including Spanish and French.
Further evidence that EditaPaper posts are AI-generated are various instances of posts’ authors explicitly referring to themselves as large language models.
Given the obvious use of AI to generate posts promoting EditaPaper, it seems likely that EditaPaper also uses AI to generate essays for its paying customers.
Conclusion
While the EditaPaper website suggests that the service keeps human writers on call, the VK posts we identified promoting EditaPaper’s services suggest otherwise.
Our researchers could not precisely determine the exact intended aim of the EditaPaper-affiliated pages. Since many of the EditaPaper posts include the text “EXAMPLE IN ENGLISH” and VK’s user base is primarily Russian-speaking, this could suggest the service hopes to attract customers for whom English is a second language (though this would require additional research to verify).
The dramatic shift in posting activity associated with these accounts, which used VK’s API to post at high volumes, was particularly notable. Our interrogation of those irregularities may provide useful context for researchers in their future investigations.
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Paul Sonne and Alina Lobzina. “Russia Pushes a State-Controlled ‘Super App’ by Sabotaging Its Rivals.” The New York Times. 21 October 2025. Here.