🇵🇰Today Facebook announced the suspension of a big network of accounts in Pakistan for coordinated inauthentic behavior. My Internet Observatory team analyzed the network before it came down. The most interesting part of the network? Mass reporting. cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/report…
The network found accounts they perceived to be critical of Islam or Pakistan & pushed links to Groups & Pages that took users directly to Facebook’s site to report an account. They even included instructions on how to open dozens of tabs simultaneously to expedite reporting. 💻 
They boasted of successes frequently, but we can’t confirm whether these accounts were taken down due to reporting. Some targeted accounts had intentionally insulting fake names which were clearly in violation of Facebook's policies.
The network used a Chrome extension called Auto Reporter to report accounts in bulk, and likely to generate the direct reporting links. The extension is still live, as is the developer’s YouTube channel with tutorials with anti-Islamic examples: archive.is/Yqbkg
Indeed, the developer explicitly said on Facebook that the extension can be used for reporting “anti-Islamic” and “anti-Pakistan” accounts. He also used similar language about this on the Chrome Web Store. We hope Google bans the extension and the YouTube channel.
The information operation component of the network praised the Pakistani military and government, and criticized Indian Prime Minister Modi and Pakistani social and religious groups, like the Ahmadi community.
Yet there were also a number of Indian Army fan Pages and Groups, or unclear purpose. Most of the content was pro-India, though occasionally they would post content critical of Modi.
And there was some multi-level marketing scheme spam, including an image claiming incorrectly that Obama attended a Forever Living Products training in Brazil.
This was a big team effort with @RossEwald, @jennifer_neda, @asfandyarmir, Kim Ngo, @tashahpatel, and A.R. Here’s our full report: fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/20… Here is Facebook’s announcement: about.fb.com/news/2020/09/a…
