Thread by @AtlanticCouncil

Facebook's @ngleicher, who coordinates the company's work to detect & disrupt information operations on the platform, says such information operations are defined as "any coordinated effort to manipulate or corrupt public debate to achieve a strategic goal." #DigitalSherlocks 1/

Why does @ngleicher prefer to talk about "information operations" rather than "disinformation"? He says "The vast majority of content we see isn't provably false… Information operations speaks to this broader notion of behavior." #DigitalSherlocks 2/

"More & more… it's getting hard to tell whether it's a gov't or non-gov't, whether the operation is foreign or domestic," says @ngleicher. "When we take an enforcement action it's very important we do not make decisions based on who is behind an operation." #DigitalSherlocks 3/

"In most cases the people using products are looking to find innovative & powerful ways to use them & the product designers want to help…" says @ngleicher. "In this space…the users are trying to take advantage…to do really unconscionable things." #DigitalSherlocks 4/

"How do you do adversarial design without swallowing building these communities & enabling the very powerful and positive public debate?" asks @Facebook's @ngleicher.

"What we're trying to do is to combine security principles and product design." #DigitalSherlocks 5/

Facebook's approach to adversarial design is a cycle, says @ngleicher, that first seeks to understand adversarial innovation in order to defend against the newest threats and build out scaled solutions to protect against those innovations. #DigitalSherlocks 6/

Providing examples of coordinated and inauthentic behavior on social media platforms, @ngleicher says transparency is key to enabling detection and action.

"Any time you provide transparency you empower open source research." #DigitalSherlocks 6/

"All of this terrain is far more malleable than…in the physical world," says @ngleicher. "We can over time change the terrain to make it more conducive to authenticity & more resilient to deception… we can essentially force threat actors down hill." #DigitalSherlocks 8/end