A new online influence operation that seeks to counter West Papua’s independence movement appears to have emerged on prominent social media sites, as @BenDoBrown reports. bellingcat.com/news/2020/11/1…
@BenDoBrown The discovery comes roughly one year after a similar network of fake accounts was uncovered by Bellingcat.
@BenDoBrown Although the new web of between 100 and 200 accounts has made little impact thus far, it appears to stretch across Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram.
@BenDoBrown It also utilises methods that have not previously been documented in the online conversation around West Papuan independence.
@BenDoBrown These include the deployment of accounts with fake profile images generated via machine learning tools as well as the use of Dutch and German language posts that appear designed to influence the debate abroad.
@BenDoBrown Who or what is behind the new network of accounts remains unclear.
@BenDoBrown Bellingcat has made Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube aware of the accounts uncovered. Twitter stated it had "suspended" those highlighted in line with its platform manipulation and spam policy.
@BenDoBrown Read the full story here: bellingcat.com/news/2020/11/1…

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More from @bellingcat

12 Nov
In our newest investigation Bellingcat exposes the relationship between the Russian foreign intelligence services and the MH17 focused "independent investigative platform" Bonanza Media (@bonanzamedia2)
bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
Phone records and leaked emails obtained by Bellingcat show that since its founding by former RT journalist Yana Yerlashova there has been multiple communications between Yerlashova and two GRU officers.
Col. Sergey Chebanov – a graduate of Russia’s Military Intelligence Academy - received multiple updates about Bonanza's activities and plans, including draft press releases and articles. Image
Read 10 tweets
10 Nov
The Shatt al-Arab river is the lifeline of southern #Iraq. Yet, wars, poor governance and oil spills have exacerbated pollution and public health concerns, fuelling protest and ecological activism. Here's what @wammez and @MahaalGhareeb found: bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020…
@wammez @MahaalGhareeb Agricultural areas around #Basra have suffered immensely from decades of conflict, which has destroyed date palms and damaged marshlands. Furthermore, #climatecrisis induced salinisation impacts fertility and soil quality in the region, destroying farmers' livelihoods.
@wammez @MahaalGhareeb After southern Iraq's 2018 health crisis, promises were made to improve the situation and provide clean water. Yet little has changed. Sewage and oil spills into the upstream #Euphrates and #Tigris rivers continue. The country's water infrastructure remains in a poor state.
Read 6 tweets
29 Oct
Together with @ForensicArchi, we have verified and mapped over 1,000 incidents of police violence against protesters in the United States. We found widespread and systematic violence against unarmed civilians. bellingcat.com/news/americas/…
@ForensicArchi In June, we visualized 150 instances of violence against journalists at the protests. Since then, the protests, and the backlash from law enforcement, have continued, with little to no accountability for the officers involved. bellingcat.com/news/americas/…
@ForensicArchi With the help of other researchers (such as @greg_doucette) we collected data from social media, verifying each incident down to the exact coordinates. We are making the dataset that informed this platform publicly available, and you can view it here:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
Read 5 tweets
26 Oct
@ClarkeMicah of the Mail On Sunday (@mailonline) did not reply to requests for comment, despite the DG's letter having been mentioned by Whelan in one of @clarkemicah's blogs.
And, rather unsurprisingly, @wikileaks did not reply to requests for comment either.
It was always apparent from the evidence presented that the idea of a "Douma coverup" was fundamentally flawed and relied on questionable claims.
Read 5 tweets
26 Oct
Last year documents were leaked from the OPCW accompanied by claims from a former OPCW employee “Alex”, that the OPCWs Douma report was “doctored”.

We've obtained correspondence which proves Alex’s claims are wrong and that no such "doctoring" took place.
bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020…
This correspondence is from the OPCW Director General, Fernando Arias, to Brendan Whelan (a.k.a Alex) who had raised concerns about the report.

It lays out the reasoning behind the report’s conclusions, including scientific methods that were developed after Whelan left the OPCW.
The correspondence makes clear that the conclusions of the OPCW report are entirely consistent with the evidence, and that the environmental samples collected from Douma provided information consistent with the use of chlorine gas as a chemical weapon.
Read 12 tweets
23 Oct
We've published a new, major investigation (along with @the_ins_ru, @derspiegel, and @SvobodaRadio) into the cooperation between the GRU's military unit 29155 and two research centers to develop and deploy chemical weapons -- including Novichok.
bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
We've acquired the phone logs for a number of officers with the GRU's unit 29155, including Andrei Averyanov. A number that kept popping up on these logs was that of Sergey Chepur -- a 50-year old military doctor and expert in extreme toxicology.
Sergey Chepur is the director of the St. Petersburg State Institute for Experimental Military Medicine of the Min. of Defense. Phone logs show that he would make a number of calls to GRU officers right before a number of key operations, including the poisoning of Sergey Skripal.
Read 9 tweets

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