Yes campaigners shared data from falsely branded website

Members of Iceland’s Yes movement, including a Social Democratic Alliance MP and the party’s parliamentary group executive director, shared disputed currency statistics from a website that is not connected to the state, mbl.is reports.

The website, ríkissjóður.is, has a name that may lead people to believe it is an official government site. It published very high figures for the alleged cost of Iceland’s króna and claimed that Iceland had adopted the euro around the turn of the millennium, when the currency was launched.

Finance Minister Daði Már Kristófersson confirmed to Morgunblaðið that the website had no connection with the government. “It is best for those publishing information to do so under their own names,” he said.

Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir expressed a similar view, saying this was especially important when information appeared on a domain that could be mistaken for an official government website. She said she could not otherwise assess the matter because she was not familiar with it.

Some Social Democratic Alliance members appeared to recognise the website quickly. Registration records indicate that it was launched on August 8 or 9.

MP Ása Berglind Hjálmarsdóttir and parliamentary group executive director Þórður Snær Júlíusson both shared material from the website on social media and did not remove it after its nature became known.

Economists consulted by Morgunblaðið said the information did not stand up to scrutiny. Although the calculations appeared to be correct, they said the underlying assumptions were “pulled out of thin air” and showed considerable ignorance of the subject.

Many people wanted to know who was behind the website, which used a misleading identity while publishing confused information ahead of a national referendum.

Isnic, which registers Icelandic domains, declined to identify the person behind the domain, citing privacy rules. Netvís said it planned to take no action because it lacked the authority to do so.

Lawyer Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, one of the most active advocates for the Yes movement, was among those who shared material from the website. When asked on Facebook who was responsible for the website he had shared, he replied that he was.

However, an investigation by Morgunblaðið found that the registered holder was entrepreneur Egill Almar Ágústsson, who has worked on artificial intelligence solutions and has also been active on social media as a supporter of the Yes movement. He confirmed to the newspaper that he was the holder of the domain.

Ríkissjóður.is is not the only similar website connected to him. Other websites include raundæmi.is, verðtryggingin.is and vextirnir.is. The sites were created with assistance from the artificial intelligence system Claude.