Thread by @benimmo

JUST OUT: @Facebook monthly report on coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

Two new takedowns:

1) From India, focused on Gulf geopolitics and football. @Graphika_NYC report to follow.
2) From Egypt, focused on regional geopolitics. @DFRLab reporting

about.fb.com/news/2020/03/f…

Top-line thoughts first of all:

1. Five takedowns in this report, covering influence ops from India, Egypt, Russia, Iran, Myanmar, Vietnam.

IO come from many places, and they target many places.

(H/t @jean_leroux for the map)

2. Look at the actors in these takedowns:

- marketing firms in India and Egypt;
- Russian military intelligence;
- Iranian pro-regime operators;
- telecoms companies in Myanmar and Vietnam.

It's not just about state actors here.

3. These were multi-platform operations, not just on Facebook and Instagram, but also Twitter, YouTube, Medium, Reddit, websites, blogs, and even LinkedIn.

That's normal. Multi-platform info ops are the rule these days, not the exception.

(And yes, @ManCity got mentions too.)

4. As @jessbrandt pointed out, it wasn't just about elections; indeed, election content barely featured.

This was about much broader-based influence, plus a lot of audience-building clickbait.

(Image from the Indian takedown set. IO come in all sorts of guises.)

5. The audiences varied hugely, from 60 (Iran set) to 6 million (Egypt set, though note that this will include followers of legitimate assets too, since FB de-platformed two marketing companies for it.)

IO come in all shapes and sizes. Don't assume they're big.

And here it is: our @Graphika_NYC report on what we're calling "Operation Red Card", because it dealt in part with football (soccer) and got removed from the field of social-media operations.

H/t @camillefrancois for the title.

graphika.com/reports/operat…

Facebook attributed this set to an Indian marketing firm, aRep Global.

The open-source evidence pointed to India as the origin too. This was "True News Source", allegedly based in Canada, but the FB page was managed from India and Nigeria.

The operation was run from India. It was based around websites that claimed to be news outlets in Canada, the US and UK, but the connecting theme was Gulf geopolitics.

They didn't like Saudi much.

Or the UAE.

I call this bit, "Don't admirate the Emirates."

That stretched to football, too. Various operation assets posted about "sportswashing" as it pertained to @ManCity (owned by Sheikh Mansour) and rumours of a Saudi purchase of @ManUtd or @NUFC.

On the other hand, the operation was lavish in its praise of Qatar's football hosting, especially its preparation for the @FIFAWorldCup 2022.

This account was focused on Qatar football, though it's a shame they mixed up the words "Asian" and "Arabian" in the bio. Easily done when you're pretending to be in a different continent.

The accounts seemed to like all kinds of stuff about Qatar. Not just football, but food, festivals, diplomacy... It wasn't the majority of posts by any means, but it was pretty consistent.

(The profile pic for this account was an @alamy stock shot, incidentally.)

So, putting it together, we have an operation run by a marketing firm in India, pretending to be based in various countries, but its connecting theme was hostility to Saudi and the UAE (also, to a lesser extent, Iran).

It praised Qatar, especially as an international host.

Much of its messaging picked up on genuine human-rights concerns, especially over Yemen and women's rights.

Info ops don't need to make up scandals when they can amplify genuine ones. (This is why it's important to distinguish between IO and disinformation.)

We don't have the smoking invoice, so can't attribute this operation to its ultimate beneficiary, but the content is consistent with pro-Qatar actors.

That's especially interesting, because we've already had takedowns of assets from Saudi and the UAE that targeted Qatar, and takedowns from Iran that targeted Saudi and the UAE.

Is anyone in the Gulf *not* trolling everyone else?

about.fb.com/news/2019/08/c…

Final point: this operation didn't get much impact. Relatively few page views, and a handful of engagements at most on most of its posts.

Effort doesn't always translate into effect. With info ops, it's always important not to overstate their effect.

Meanwhile, lovely report from @DFRLab's @jean_leroux on the Egyptian takedown: this time, Egyptian commercial firms targeting Turkey and Qatar, inter alia.

Come for the analysis, stay for the puns.

medium.com/dfrlab/faceboo…