Thread by @marcowenjones

[Thread] 1/ There is currently a #disinformation campaign attacking the human rights organization @ALQST_ORG - most accusing it of 'attacking' Saudi and being a Muslim Brotherhood entity.The campaign would suggest it was state-backed, and involves dozens of fake accounts. Read on

2/ ALQST is a human rights org focused on Saudi. Some will remember that Alaa Al Siddiq was a member. Sadly Alaa died in a car crash recently in the UK. The context of the attack is ALQST discussing HR in Saudi and sharing a panel and with Amnesty International at #HRC48

3/ Curious about this network, approximately 50 Twitter accounts, almost all featuring profile pictures of attractive young women, are spreading a collection of tweets and infographics condemning ALQST. I collected some of them below to give you an idea. #disinformation >

4/ In addition to the fact the accounts all feature women, functioning as a 'honey trap', they are from across the Middle East, from Oman, Saudi and Algeria, to Libya, Morocco & Egypt. The idea here is to create the illusion of broad & widespread consensus of the message

5/ Despite the obvious pattern in gendering the message, many of the accounts use sockpuppet accounts. I.e. accounts that used to belong to someone else but have been hacked/purchased. Some examples

Salwa Ali was Jerome Kelly
Gehad Mohammed was Jose Giraud
Aya Abid was Kenneth

6/ Of course then there's my favourite, Asmaa Magdy, aka 'cool kid never lie'. It's true, cool kids don't like, nor do they do drugs!

7/ The accounts also use Twitter Web App, and all tweeted more or less at the same time. As the below graph shows, most in this case are 'isolated' (not all). That is to say, they tweeted on the topic without obvious co-ordination - despite them sharing the same infographics

8/ In other words, the intent is to create the illusion of spontaneity and no - ordination - e.g. authentic and organic. Ironically it does the opposite.

9/ What are they saying. Well they are accusing the organisation of supporting terrorism via the Muslim Brotherhood, a trope we usually see coming from UAE, Egypt, or Saudi. One of the infographics even features Citizen Lab's @billmarczak

10/ One of the infographics focuses on @joshcooperate and sort of refers to a Jewish British Qatari conspiracy. Not quite sure what they mean by that.

11/ In terms of their past behaviour, perhaps no prizes for guessing. Lots of anti Turkish and anti Qatar content, mostly accusing them of supporting terrorism, and destabilising Libya.

12/ An interesting aspect of these accounts is that they spend a lot of time interacting with other accounts (such as replying). These replies are often propaganda or generic comments, but they work to give the impression (& tells Twitter) that they are authentic #disinformation