Thread by @benimmo

NEW: @Facebook just announced a batch more takedowns for coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

UAE, Nigeria, Egypt, Indonesia. Over 800 assets.

Most involved commercial companies, but the themes were political. Mercenary info ops.

newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/10/r…

@facebook The first set: three marketing firms in UAE, Egypt and Nigeria. The latter is especially interesting, as it expands the scope of known UAE-related ops in Africa.

<1.4 million accounts following them. Ad spend <$150,000.

That suggests how much money is in this business.

@facebook The content's interesting. Among other things, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Other themes: Yemen, criticism of Turkey and Iran.

Who might be paying for this? we ask ourselves.

@facebook It's not the first takedown like that, either. Remember in August, Facebook took down a batch of assets run by firms in Egypt and UAE? Qatar was a theme there, too.

newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/08/c…

@facebook Similar approach here, but this time linked to an Egyptian newspaper.

Again, the geopolitics are pretty clear. Egypt, Saudi, UAE vs Turkey, Qatar, Iran.

Higher following but lower ad spend this time.

@facebook Worth noting that these were all taken down after internal investigations, not tip-offs.

The pace of takedowns has really picked up over the last year, as I can attest, having covered so many of them with @DFRLab.

@facebook @DFRLab Again, note the geopolitics on Qatar and Somalia.

Seen that before.

@facebook @DFRLab Really interesting on Indonesia: pages posting on both sides around independence in West Papua.

Divisive tactics? Trying to drive engagement any way they could?

Linked to a media firm, revealed by internal investigation, and a significant ad spend: about $300,000.

@facebook @DFRLab Tying it together, there are two interesting points here.

One is the scale of operations pushing a pro-UAE / pro-Saudi / anti-Qatar / anti-Brotherhood line. The spider's web keeps on expanding on this.

@facebook @DFRLab The other is the actors: commercial companies - marketing firms - pushing political and geopolitical narratives.

The genie's out of the bottle. There's money to be made from offering political info ops. Look at the sums spent on ads alone.

@facebook @DFRLab It's not the first time. Remember the Archimedes case?

But it won't be the last time, either.

newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/05/r…