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Marc Owen Jones

@marcowenjones

12 Mar

@LoujainHathloul

[Thread] 1/6 This one is on a large level cyber-bullying/harassment. A few days ago a trend targeting the Alhathloul family was trending in Saudi.

Tweets like that below, which targeted @LoujainHathloul's siblings things like 'traitors' were very much part of the campaign

2/6 The hashtag (Family of the humiliated) was a pun on the Alhathloul family name.

Humiliated in Arabic is mathloul. This is similar to Hathloul. It's not sophisticated, but harassment rarely is

Imagine thousands of people attacking your family on Twitter. Looks like this>

@70sul

3/6 Anyway this trend produced thousands of tweets. I looked at a sample of around 13000 interactions.

Some of the most retweeted accounts include the verified @70sul , another account @saudix7m & @abdullah113438

A dominant theme was describing them as 'agents' or 'traitors

Read 6 tweets

Marc Owen Jones

@marcowenjones

10 Mar

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1369250251601764354

A few important notes on this great article. 1) I would caution there is a prevailing narrative about Saudi accounts, risks creating a straw man. 2) it is useful to make a distinction between bots and trolls as trolling is behavioural not computational; Trolls

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1369250251601764354

could be hypernationalist real or paid real people attacking those who disagree 3) Saying someone is a real human risks conflating that with a troll whose *unknown* function might be to artificially generate support 5) As bots and trolls evolve it becomes more difficult to do

anomaly detection at scale and be sure of how many accounts have been missed in analysis 6) Twitter's own suspensions aren't a reliable or comprehensive barometer of what is and isn't definitely a bot - or troll 7) co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour includes trolls (real humans)

Read 9 tweets

Marc Owen Jones

@marcowenjones

9 Mar

1/12"US Tech Companies like Twitter probably breathed a sigh of relief when Biden announced that he was not going to directly sanction Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering the murder of Jamal #Khashoggi." #JamalKhashoggi

2/12"...Not because Twitter bares any ill will towards murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but because the Saudi Market and the cult of personality around the Crown Prince, in particular, offer a lucrative revenue stream for the US company"

3/12"Indeed, the amount of Saudi money in Silicon Valley has raised concerns that it will become a 'reputation-laundering machine for one of the least admirable regimes on earth'. And not without good reason, especially considering that MBS chairs the Public Investment Fund"

Read 12 tweets

Marc Owen Jones

@marcowenjones

1 Mar

[Another thread on Saudi bots] 1/ On the day of the release of the CIA report onto #JamalKhashoggi 's killing. A number of hashtags seemingly designed to dilute criticism of MBS were trended, including the mispelled 'khasxoggi' and 3aaashogggi (عاشخجي), These trends were created

2/ by inauthentic networks amounting to thousands of accounts. The below graph shows approx 1,152 unique accounts all tweeting on the "عااااشقجي" hashtag (3aaashoggi). The fact they are individual and not forming complex networks indicates they are isolated accounts tweeting

3/ Of the 1152 accounts, 1147 (99%) used 'Twitter Web App', showing almost no source (application) diversity. Twitter Web App is often used for platform manipulation. Again, how something can trend with so many inorganic flags is beyond me. Most of the content is irrelevant

Read 4 tweets

Marc Owen Jones

@marcowenjones

28 Feb

[Thread on Saudi bots] 1/ On 25th February, a day before the release of the CIA report on MBS's ordering of #JamalKhashoggi 's murder, the trend 'the people of the kingdom (Saudi) support the crown prince'. No doubt the purpose was to rally support around MBS before bad publicity

2/ Such trends lionizing the Crown Prince are very common. This one demonstrated some interesting inauthentic activity. The following analysis show how the tweet screenshotted below (which says MBS will overcome his enemies), was retweeted by hundreds of fake accounts

3/ How do we know? A network analysis of the hashtag reveals an unusual cluster of accounts in the bottom left. Here's the edges (relationships between accounts) have been coloured according to device used to send the tweet. The orange shows that activity around this account

Read 8 tweets

Marc Owen Jones

@marcowenjones

27 Feb

In the wake of the CIA release of Khasoggi report dozens of identical tweets per second saying "I am Saudi and proud of this great country and trust and have faith in the wise leadership". So much for Twitter's spam and platform manipulation policy...