Thread by @marcowenjones

[Thread]1/ The WTO report released today found that Saudi has failed to stop and permitted a commercial-level piracy operation of the BeIN sports channel. Already trending in Saudi is the patently false hashtag, "WTO rejects Qatari complaints". Here is a breakdown of the hashtag

2/ As of 8pm, I've analysed around 6571 interactions (tweets, RTs, replies etc) from around 4000 unique Twitter accounts. The usual suspects are some of the most widely retweeted, including the verified accounts: @monther72 @SalmanAldosary @70sul @amjadt25 @alekhbariyatv

3/ Interestingly, spreading this patently misleading content is @skynewsarabia presenter @a_albander . Also there is @SaudiNews50 - an account linked to SMAAT, a Saudi social media company, who in December 2019 had 88000 accounts removed by Twitter for platform manipulation.

4/ Interestingly, some of these lot these accounts were very active in the harassment of @ghadaoueiss and @OlaAlfares , as well as the recent disinformation campaigns about a fake coup in Qatar. For want of a better word, many appear to be professional liars #كذابي_محترفين

5/ You may see this being circulated. While the letter head has WTO branding, it is actually a statement from the Saudi Perm Mission to the WTO (as said in header). It's basically the Saudis ignoring the ruling to try and spin it as positive Thanks @BarryJIngham1 for sharing

6/ I dare say this will certainly have implications for #NUFCTakeover, but the focus of the WTO case was highlighting Saudi's behaviour regarding piracy of BeIN content.

7 Updated graph of those most retweeted on the "WTO refused Qatar complaints" disinformation hashtag. Mostly Saudi and Emirati accounts. There's around 16k tweets here.