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JUST OUT: @Facebook's monthly report on takedowns for coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

- Truth Media (global; @Graphika_NYC report to follow)
- Romania
- Iraq / Switzerland
- DRC
- Yemen

Around the world in 80 takedowns?

about.fb.com/news/2020/08/j…
Here's what we saw on Truth Media.

A network of pages run from many locations (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia...) amplified by fake accounts.

graphika.com/reports/truth-…
This was one kind of amplifier: accounts with stock shots as profile pictures, sometimes of young women...
... sometimes of children.

Facebook said they saw "some links" to the "TheBL" network they took down in December 2019. That one used a lot of GAN-generated profile pictures; we didn't see that this time.
(We covered that takedown too, with @DFRLab.

We called it #OperationFFS, which stood, of course, for "fake face swarm."

graphika.com/reports/operat…)
One interesting aspect is that the latest takedown set pointed towards a number of anti-Chinese Communist Party websites, some of them copyrighted to the Epoch Times.

Facebook said the Truth Media set "showed some links" to on-platform activity by Epoch Media Group and NTD.
The takedown set also promoted calls to rename Covid-19 the "CCP virus."

This even included a petition on the White House website.
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More from @benimmo see all

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Ben Nimmo
@benimmo
BREAKING: UK gov't "almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 General Election through the online amplification of illicitly acquired and leaked Government documents."

These were the trade leaks from op Secondary Infektion.
graphika.com/reports/UK-tra…
"Sensitive Government documents relating to the UK-US Free Trade Agreement were illicitly acquired before the 2019 General Election and disseminated online via the social media platform Reddit."

UK statement here.

parliament.uk/business/publi…
For those coming to this from a standing start, this story broke when UK-US trade documents leaked a couple of weeks before the general election.

theguardian.com/society/2019/n…
Read 11 tweets
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Ben Nimmo
@benimmo
Remember "DCblackout"?

At @Graphika_NYC, we've dug into how it happened.

Top takes:

- False info thrives when reliable sources are missing;
- Amplifiers can be key in boosting or damping it;
- Calling out "bots" requires really solid proof.

graphika.com/reports/misinf…
It starts with a dramatic and fast-moving situation on the night of May 31 to June 1: protests and tear gas in D.C., and reporters live-tweeting updates.

Tension, fear, fast-paced events. Fertile ground for confusion to take hold.
As the journalists go to bed - it being past 2am by then - the confusion sets in.

Users outside D.C. start asking why the capital's going silent.

This *doesn't* look like coordinated deception, but people getting alarmed.
Read 20 tweets
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Ben Nimmo
@benimmo
BREAKING: @Facebook just took down four networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior. Attributions include:

- "some of the employees of the offices of (...) Eduardo Bolsonaro, Flavio Bolsonaro and Jair Bolsonaro";

- "Roger Stone and his associates."

about.fb.com/news/2020/07/r…
Other attributions:

- "Postmen DA, an advertising agency in Ukraine";

- "political consultants and former government employees in Ecuador and Estraterra, a Canada-based PR firm".

PR companies have featured in a fair few takedowns recently.
Different countries, languages and contexts, but a common denominator of coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

Some ideas do get around, don't they?
Read 7 tweets

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