EXCLUSIVE: my team at the @DFRLab & I uncovered a massive political influence op run by a Tunisian company that ran a network of more than 900 FB pages, groups, users and IG accounts to influence presidential elections across Africa. atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-resea… #OperationCarthage
@DFRLab The op, which we’re referring to as #OperationCarthage, used coordinated inauthentic behavior on FB and other platforms to influence multiple elections.
@DFRLab Among the campaigns supported by #OperationCarthage were Nabil Karoui’s 2019 presidential campaign in Tunisia, Faure Gnassingbé’s Feb 2020 campaign in Togo and Henri Konan Bédié’s current campaign in Cote d’Ivoire.
Our investigation of #OperationCarthage began in Sept 2019 when we discovered a Tunisian fact-checking page on FB, Fake News Checking, that was reminiscent of a similar page created by the Archimedes Group, which was taken down by FB in May 2019. 
Digging further into the effort, we found multiple Francophone news sites that shared similar website designs and “staff” with suspended Twitter accts who didn’t seem to exist. #OperationCarthage
Our research then led us to a Tunisian PR company called UReputation. On their server we found a subdomain that appeared to be impersonating a polling firm. When asked about it, the page disappeared. #OperationCarthage
Left: a version polling page hosted by UReputation. Right: the one hosted by cerpma.org, allegedly a polling firm, before they disappeared. #OperationCarthage
We reached out to FB as part of our partnership with them regarding election integrity. Subsequent investigations by FB led to the removal of 900+ assets across FB and IG that they attributed to UReputation. #OperationCarthage
With exclusive access to the data set prior to removal, the @DFRLab reviewed more than 500 of these assets. This led to us finding evidence of coordinated inauthentic behavior supporting Faure Gnassingbé in #Togo and Henri Konan Bédié (HKB) in #CIV. #OperationCarthage
@DFRLab In #Togo, multiple FB pages were created to support Faure’s presidential campaign over the course of several weeks in Jan 2020. #OperationCarthage
@DFRLab Additionally, a copy of Faure’s official campaign page was found on a UReputation subdomain, unir.ureputation.net. Here you can compare the two. #OperationCarthage #Togo
@DFRLab In #CIV, the influence operation created pro #HKB pages going back to 2016. Additional pages, including ones posing as news outlets, were created over the last year. #OperationCarthage
@DFRLab We also discovered a subdomain on a Tunisian election site masquerading as an Ivorian election site connected to yet another FB page in the operation. #OperationCarthage
@DFRLab According to FB, #OperationCarthage spent the equivalent of more than $300k in FB ads to support the political influence operation. FB began to remove the 900+ pages last Friday night.
@DFRLab For more about our investigation of #OperationCarthage, you can download our full report here: atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-resea…
