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Benjamin Strick Profile picture
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17 Feb, 7 tweets, 4 min read
Facebook just announced it will restrict publishers and users in Australia from sharing or viewing news content.

Here's the breakdown of what that entails 👇
about.fb.com/news/2021/02/c… Image
Also an important point. It's not just Australia. The restriction is international, on Australian news publishers.

"Globally, posting and sharing news links from Australian publishers is also restricted".

That will be crippling. Image
Oh no! They got the Albany Advertiser Facebook page!

I did my cadetship here in 2009. A great community-based newspaper. It's just one of the many Facebook pages that have become a staple for media in Australia that are now cleared. ImageImage
Um. I'm not sure I agree if these pages should have been cleared of content. They are State Health update providers in Australia.

@Facebook? ImageImage
Nope - don't need the UN's Facebook account in Australia either? Image
Wow. All posts removed of @BowelCancerAust and @KidsCancerProj. ImageImage
Verified University Institutions in Australia have also had their posts removed in Facebook's news restrictions.

There's a bit of an oversight here about what constitutes a 'news organisation'. ImageImageImage

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More from @BenDoBrown

Benjamin Strick Profile picture
19 Feb
An influence operation was waged online yesterday to amplify pro-BJP text in the #AmitShahInBengal tag, attack opposition, and win over Indian voters. Full report: benjaminstrick.com/inside-an-infl…

This forensic thread details 🧵👇
- HOW it was done
- HOW it spread
- WHO runs them Image
1. HOW WAS THIS OPERATION CARRIED OUT?

Yesterday morning I came across these tweets, and was sent these WhatsApp messages from contacts in India.

What are they? They're links to a Google Drive, containing suggested tweets and graphics to use. Let's have a closer peek. ImageImage
Here is the Google Drive with a Google Document containing text packets of suggested tweets, and a folder with images for the network to pump out through Twitter. ImageImage
Read 24 tweets
Benjamin Strick Profile picture
31 Jan
Here we go again. Pro-BJP networks are again targeting West Bengali politics using copy and paste text packets to spam the tag #BJPGorbeSonarBangla.

CC @TwitterSafety
The copy and paste (copypasta) network is getting its text packets from this Google document. The tweets are in English, Hindi and Bangla.

Thank you to those who sent this through to me. It's an effective campaign to influence the topic of the coming elections.
The size of this sort of influence network? Well... I've just been collecting tweets under tag #BJPGorbeSonarBangla over the past 15 minutes. So far I've raked in 1789 tweets and growing 😅

Here's a visualisation of the main strand. The large nodes are: @AmitShah and @BJP4India
Read 5 tweets
Benjamin Strick Profile picture
11 Jan
A copypasta campaign in India is targeting politically-sensitive tags #TMCHataoBanglaBachao & #KrishokSurokhaAbhijan on Twitter. I captured data over the past week for analysis.

Report: benjaminstrick.com/twitter-analys… CC @TwitterSafety

Here's some findings in this #OSINT thread 🧵👇
It's clear there is coordinated activity here. Scores of pro-BJP/Pro-Modi accounts operate in a network to spam packets of text (copypasta method)

Example: the tag #TMCHataoBanglaBachao with the text “Bengal has been suffering from last 10 years. The TMC regime has built..."
And another related campaign, using the tag #KrishokSurokhaAbhijan with the text: "নতুন কৃষি আইনের দ্বারা কৃষিজ পণ্য বিক্রি করা হবে আরও সহজ। বিজেপি সরকার আনছে কৃষক সুরক্ষা অভিযান।"
Read 16 tweets
Benjamin Strick Profile picture
24 Dec 20
Hi Twitter, having spent a lot of time on @googleearth, I've built up a collection art visible from space. I'd like to share some of my favs with you all in this thread 🛰️🎨

First up is the 'grandma' from Ella & Pitr in Pavilion 3, France, located here: goo.gl/maps/KGANS9Cge….
Exhibit 2 is also from Ella & Pitr, this time in Panaji, Goa, India. This one is of a swimmer, taking a rest on the roof of a carpark. It is located here: goo.gl/maps/Wpue1tDEN…. And you can find some of the other ones they did nearby here: xxlcollective.com/ella-pitr1
Exhibit 3 (one of my favs) is Art Attack from Kitt Bennett in Reservoir, Victoria, Australia (here: goo.gl/maps/nc1CbxY8E…). It is spread over three basketball courts. (original post here: instagram.com/p/Bc4AQUiBcmQ/)
Read 13 tweets
Benjamin Strick Profile picture
7 Dec 20
A small network of fake accounts linked to an Iranian influence operation was posting about COVID & US Politics using accounts with bios & pics copied from UK media and activists & others disguised as 'fanatics'.

Here's my research on @ASPI_ICPC s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2020-1…
First, this investigation originated out of Twitter's data from a influence network takedown in October (screenshot is of data in that report): transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/inf…. The new accounts are the ones that survived.

Second, this network was small and had minimal impact.
I looked a little deeper into the accounts in the takedown report and started to find some strange things. Under many of the suspended accounts, comments had been made using the same text with the same video - so let's look at who's posting them.
Read 11 tweets
Benjamin Strick Profile picture
11 Nov 20
For the past month I have been watching the tags #WestPapua & #PapuanLivesMatter.

What I found was a network of Dutch, German & English accounts with fake pics attempting to distort the narrative of independence.

Here's some of the findings in a 🧵👇
bellingcat.com/news/2020/11/1…
First, the most interesting trend of HOW.

Many of the accounts across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram used artificially-generated profile pictures (GAN) to disguise themselves. Here's an example from the accounts on Twitter - the detail is in the eyes 👀
Of course, if you're an influence researcher (or a news fanatic) this isn't the first time you would have seen fake accounts utilising GAN images. You might have seen examples from @elisethoma5 & @benimmo on them.
Here: and here:
Read 17 tweets

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