1/ Today we published our 3rd monthly CIB report: we removed 8 networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior in April. about.fb.com/news/2020/05/a…
2/ Six of the eight networks were domestic and targeted audiences in their own countries — in the US, Georgia, Myanmar and Mauritania.
3/ Two of them were foreign and targeted audiences outside of their countries: We linked one to individuals in Russia, Crimea and the Donbass regions of Ukraine and two media firms in Crimea; another was linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Corporation.
4/ This foreign-focused activity is similar to what we’ve seen in the past from actors in these countries.
5/ We’ve continued to see more than half of CIB campaigns be domestic - where actors target audiences in their own countries. That is consistent with over 2 years of our work in this area.
6/ We've also seen that domestic actors learn from the tactics originally deployed by foreign or nation-state actors. That's one reason why we don't limit our investigations to only foreign cases.
7/ All of the networks in this report were created before the coronavirus pandemic but we’ve seen them opportunistically leverage COVID-related topics. This is similar to what security teams globally have seen from other adversaries - whether phishing campaigns or spam networks.
8/ Proud of the work of our counter influence operations team, which has grown to more than 200 experts across the company, particularly for keeping the pressure on deceptive actors, even during the shift to shelter in place due to COVID-19.
10/ Most of these investigations were a result of our proactive work, but a couple of our cases benefited importantly from public reporting: H/t @StopFakingNews, @MythDetector, and @zeitonline on their reporting on the networks originating in Russia and Georgia.
