Thread by @benimmo

I keep getting questions about last week’s IRACopyPasta @facebook takedown and which campaigns it was targeting.

Context is really important here: it mostly wasn’t posting about the election. It looks like it was still in audience-building mode.

graphika.com/reports/copypa…

A lot was about amplifying American social divisions. Hence the inclusion of Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Christian, Muslim... Some accounts were pro-Trump, others pro-Sanders.

Wider than posting about the election, it was pouring oil on American fires.

That said, it does look like there was an intention to interfere in the election, judging by the states it targeted.

The inclusion of pro-Trump and pro-Sanders content would fit the IRA's pattern in 2016, too.

Joe Biden did appear to be singled out. Accounts on both sides of the divide posted negative comments about him, the way the IRA treated Hillary Clinton in 2016.

graphika.com/uploads/Graphi…

But remember, again, this operation was taken down over a year before the 2020 election.

Election interference was one likely target, but we have to stay open to the indications that it was also about sowing division more generally.

So much of this operation recycled content produced by American users. That's one way it tried to hide.

For me, the biggest target of all this was U.S. society writ large. A foreign operation amplifying partisan, often hyper-partisan, American posts to an American audience.

"Divide and conquer" is still a thing.