I’ve been asked to weigh in on the explosion of dummy accounts on Philippines Facebook especially in the wake of #JunkTerrorBillNow. Having tracked the evolution of disinfo campaigns since 2016, this is alarming as it represents a *break* from previous strategy. 1/8
Our recent NATO Stratcom study highlighted that in 2019 there was little evidence of automated influence; instead the strategies were 1) using micro-influencers and infiltrators of closed groups to manually seed narratives and 2) doubling-down on DDS-vs-dilawan rhetoric. 2/8 
to me the use of automated "cheapfakes" raise the primary question of how this was actually done before we speculate on why this was done. I would begin by asking Facebook and cybersecurity investigators: 1) To what extent is this automated or manually operated? 3/8
2) Was there a security breach / data hack that exposed our private info? What other info of ours do they have access to? From 3 years of interviewing "trolls" & disinformation architects, the sophisticated ops are NOT carried out by cheapfakes or influencers like Mocha Uson 4/8
High-level strategists control the narrative but operate behind the scenes, yet occasionally they do flashy showboating of their influence operations in order to 1) impress prospective political clients (see what tricks I can do, hire me for the election!) 5/8
and/or 2) create public distraction that would exhaust our emotional energies. I’m personally worried as I can see that my mom has several fake accounts. I also see that some cheapfakes have faces & even homophobic slurs - so what data do they have access to?!? 6/8
Our 2019 NATO Stratcom Study on 4 work models of Political Trolling in the PH, which list the diverse kinds of workers complicit to this work is linked here: 7/8 stratcomcoe.org/four-work-mode…
Our Architects of Networked Disinformation research based on original interviews with paid trolls -- and they're not exactly who you think 8/8 newtontechfordev.com/newton-tech4de…
thread might be of interest to @tordesillas @SheilaCoronel @CraigSilverman @RegineCabato @Joseph_Morong @margadeona @jnery_newsstand @LynzyBilling @mariaressa
