🇮🇷🇦🇫 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. 
It is possible the intent was to undermine the peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The network also promoted the narrative that Iran is a good ally for Afghanistan, and highlighted the brutality of the Taliban.
There were lots of posts critical of Trump, posts claiming Trump and the Taliban were colluding, including this janky fabricated photo making it look like the Taliban was praying for Trump while he had COVID-19.
Posts from accounts claiming to be Afghans used the term Farsi to describe the language, instead of Dari, often explicitly saying they were proud to use the term Farsi. The two languages are very similar; Iran uses the term Farsi and Afghanistan uses the term Dari.
Several Pages imitated legit Afghan news outlets.
See our full report here, co-authored with @noupside, @ljhundley,
@sejaljjj, @tarmanderr, and @AbuzarRoyesh. github.com/stanfordio/pub… Facebook’s announcement is here: Facebook’s report is here: about.fb.com/news/2020/11/o…
@sejaljjj, @tarmanderr, and @AbuzarRoyesh. github.com/stanfordio/pub… Facebook’s announcement is here: Facebook’s report is here: about.fb.com/news/2020/11/o…
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