📑 Today Facebook announced the takedown of a Muslim Brotherhood-linked network. With so many disinfo ops linked to Saudi Arabia/UAE/Egypt, it’s interesting to have a network from the other side. Here is SIO’s report, co-authored with @maffsyy & @k_ramalicyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/novemb…
This network was suspended not due to the content of its posts, but rather for coordinated inauthentic behavior; fake profiles were central to the operation.
This was a complex cross-platform operation with a substantial audience. The Facebook Pages we looked at had almost 1.5 million followers. There were Twitter accounts & YouTube & Telegram channels. Here are accounts linked to one anti-UAE Page:
🎶A defining feature of the network was the creation of original videos and dozens of original songs.
This figure shows just how many unique videos the network produced.
There is some evidence an Egyptian digital marketing firm created at least some content for the operation. It was remarkable how many similarities there were between this operation and disinfo campaigns from Muslim Brotherhood enemies.
The narratives were unsurprising: praise for Turkey and Qatar, criticism of Saudi/Egypt/UAE. Lots of Pages highlighted the detention and killing of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt. One Page criticized Saudi’s planned futuristic city called Neom.
Two Pages focused on criticizing Trump, often highlighting his decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Page titles were…on the nose. Examples include Tunisia Against the UAE, Hearts with Qatar, and YemenAgainstKSAUEA [sic].
Here is the link to the full report: "Hello from the Other Side: An Investigation into a Musical Pro-Muslim Brotherhood Disinformation Operation" github.com/stanfordio/pub… Facebook’s report is here: about.fb.com/news/2020/11/o…
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🇮🇷🇦🇫 Tonight Facebook announced that they suspended a network that originated in Afghanistan and Iran and targeted Farsi/Dari speakers in Afghanistan. My Stanford Internet Observatory team has a report on this network here: cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/novemb…
This network was suspended not due to the content of its posts, but rather for coordinated inauthentic behavior; fake profiles were central to the operation.
This operation was novel in that it was oriented toward women, including promoting women’s rights. 53% percent of the Instagram accounts had profile photos of women (compared to 11% with photos of men), and the network shared stories about the educational success of women.
🇸🇦Today Twitter announced the takedown of 33 accounts linked to the government of Saudi Arabia. Buckle up for this one 🎢 it’s not your standard “Qatar is the worst” Saudi disinfo operation. Here’s our report: cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/twitter-t…
The network had “Royal Sockpuppets”, 👑🧦 fake accounts for real dissident Qatari Royals living in Saudi. The biggest account, pretending to be Fahad bin Abdullah Al-Thani, had >1mil followers. There were also accounts pretending to be an exiled Qatari interim govt.
How did these accounts get such big followings? It’s hard to say, for two reasons. First, many of the accounts engaged in handle switching. The now-suspended @QtrGov was not always @QtrGov - its mentions only go back a few months even though it has existed for years.
🇳🇬Today Facebook announced the removal of a network of accounts run by the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. My Stanford Internet Observatory team analyzed the network before it was taken down. Our report: cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/islamic-m…
The network was suspended not because of the content of the posts, but rather because the Facebook Pages and Groups were run by fake accounts. Facebook calls this coordinated inauthentic behavior.
The Facebook Pages and Groups advocated for the release of IMN leader Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky.
🇵🇰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.
🌟📝 Today Twitter announced the takedown of 7,340 accounts linked to the youth wing of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey’s ruling party 🇹🇷. My SIO team, w/ @akis_alp, @makrevis, @JoshAGoldstein, and Katie Jonsson, analyzed the network cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/june-2…
Takeaways: 1) this was a prolific operation; there were 37 million tweets, mostly in Turkish. Dozens of accounts were managers of retweet 🔄 rings, which worked to artificially amplify pro-AKP hashtags and the accounts of AKP politicians.
2) There was a centrally managed set of compromised accounts that were also used for AKP cheerleading.
1/ 📝 Today my Stanford Internet Observatory team is releasing a report on a Twitter and Facebook takedown of accounts linked to Egypt 🇪🇬, Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦, and the UAE 🇦🇪. fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/20… Highlights from the Twitter takedown here:
2/ The suspended Facebook Pages originated in Egypt, and are attributed to Maat, a social media marketing firm. They had some visually striking COVID-19 disinfo, criticizing how Europe and Qatar are handling the pandemic
3/ …and claiming the Iranian government is not giving correct information about COVID-19 to its citizens (left), and that Iran is the source of the pandemic (right)