Thread by @benimmo

BREAKING: @Facebook just announced a batch of takedowns from Iran and Russia, including posts targeting the 2020 election.

The Russian operation "showed some links" to the Russian IRA troll farm.

@Graphika_NYC analysed the Russian operation here: graphika.com/reports/copypa…

This was an operation from Russia targeting America.

It pushed both sides of divisive issues, including #BlackLivesMatter and gay rights.

But it was still in audience-building mode when it got taken down, and most of the accounts had low followings.

newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/10/r…

The operators tried really hard to hide, often by copying real users' content, including @BernieSanders.

@facebook said it saw "some links" to the Russian IRA.

The open-source evidence wasn't enough for a 100% attribution on its own, but it aligns with what Facebook found.

The operation targeted both sides of divisive issues: Black Lives Matter/police, Christian/Muslim, conservative/liberal...

That's many of the same groups the original troll farm targeted.

A minority of posts concerned election 2020. Of the 40 accounts @Graphika_NYC analysed, 19 gave a location in swing states, especially Florida.

We can't prove the purposes of an operation, but those locations would be consistent with election interference as one element.

Some of the language of these "American" accounts had a really Russian flavour.

"What the future for their children will be?"

Or this one: "Do you also do same?"

This one's doubly interesting.

"What a poor logic that he has," said no native English speaker ever.

And the attack on @JoeBiden from an account on the right...

... matched by anti-Biden posting from an account on the left.

Accounts on both sides of this operation repeatedly targeted Biden. It reminds me of the treatment the IRA gave Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Many of the posts were copied from real Americans. If there hadn't been angry American users, the Russian troll operation wouldn't have had anything to pretend to be.

These posts tried to build persona by attacking AOC, Ilhan Omar and Donald Trump, for example.

The "conservative" personas had a fondness for Turning Point USA content.

But some of the posts recreated old IRA memes.

Not just copy-pasted, which many spam artists have done: recreated, without the watermark.

That indicates a real effort going into masking their origins and not leaving fingerprints.

Here's a particular favourite of mine. On the left, United Muslims of America, from the original troll farm. On the right, islamination, from the latest takedown.

Spot the difference?

Here's the detail. Top, United Muslims of American. Bottom, islamination. Someone fuzzed out the watermark, but not enough.

And yes, we called this campaign IRACopyPasta, because of the copy-pasting.

The copy-pasting looked like a deliberate attempt to minimise linguistic errors, as well as blending in.

This was a good example: a second-amendment persona copy-pasting content from Wikipedia.

But the thing is, the more you blend in, the less you stand out. And on social media, standing out is everything.

Of the 40 accounts @Graphika_NYC looked at, half had under 5k followers each. Combined, that's less than following of just one original IRA asset, @TEN_GOP.