[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
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Thread 1/ Before #Qatar's borders with Saudi were finalised in 1999 (and to a lesser extent 1965), discussions of its borders with Saudi were a sticking point. This map from 1935 shows a number of suggested boundaries proposed by British Minister in Jeddah Sir Andrew Ryan ...
2/ In 1937 another similar map was proposed. The final dotted red line offer made by Ryan in this map would have given Qatar a border with Abu Dhabi, which would have had an interesting effect on regional geopolitics. Many of the roughly drawn maps would have reduced the
3/ size of Saudi Arabia as it is today. The negotiation of borders became less of an issue (according to Zahlan) until the 1960s, when a unpublished agreement took place in 1965. However this lacked clarity, and led to the deaths of two people at the Qatar/Saudi border in 1992
🧵1/ This thread is about a trend advocating for preventing Omar al-Bashir, wanted for crimes against humanity, from being sent to the ICC. It's a fantastic example of how artificially amplified and manipulated trends pretend to be grassroots sentiment #Disinformation#Sudan
2/ firstly, this shouldn't be taken lightly. The warrants against al-Bashir include the worst charges, from extermination, torture, and intentional targeting of civilians. Up to 500,000 are thought to have been killed as a result of the Darfur genocide (although figures vary).
3/ The trend translates as 'Surrending al-Bashir is an insult to Sudan'. It started trending on the evening of the 11th August. Then, @sabqorg an Arabic newspaper, ran a story about the trend saying it reflected 'popular (Gulf) outrage' about al-Bashir's plight #disinformation
🧵1/ Good morning! I gathered more data over night on the hashtag 'Qatar Revolts', which is exaggerating the scale of protests in Qatar. Approx 1040 of 10500 accounts in the sample are probably fake. There is also at least one other hacked verified account #disinformation
2/ The network graph shows a fairly independent community in the top right quadrant. If you zoom in you'll see a lot of the accounts boosting the hashtag are retweets of the account @JesseCsincsak .... #cybersecurity#disinformation
3/ Now at first glance @JesseCsincsak is a company called JCK - even the name seems to kind of match the handle. Clever. But that's a ruse, the account actually promotes almalka_store. The account is hacked, and belongs to Jesse Csinscak a pro snowboarder &ABC Bachorlette winner!
[Thread] 1/ Here is another #manipulation thread (I'll try make it shorter, but it's got some juicy nuggets). This is an analysis of the hashtag "Qatar Revolts". We've seen such hashtags on Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia etc. It's a common hashtag during *widespread* demonstrations.
2/ For context again There were/are some protests in Qatar, mostly by some members of the Al Marra tribe who have been excluded from the upcoming Shura Elections. For more background on statelessness in Qatar, see this AI report for example: refworld.org/docid/483e27ab…
3/ As this graph shows, the two circled communities are worth further examination. Both represent accounts being retweeted heavily by accounts using an identical application (in this case, Twitter Web App). Who are they retweeting? See next > #disinformation#Qatar
[Thread] 1/ This thread is on Qatar's long-awaited upcoming Shura elections, and manipulation on the hashtag 'elections for the Shura council'. I analyzed around 18000 interactions involving around 8600 unique accounts. #disinformation#deception
2/ The sample is from the last two days, and generally encompasses the majority of activity on the hashtag. (Of course the presence of manipulation doesn't discount any of the important issues being raised about electoral fairness and inclusion, but I am focusing on manipulation)
3/ Firstly. There is clear, unequivocal manipulation going on. If you look at the network graph below, it shows a large hub of accounts (green block), along with a separate pinkish constellation. The pinkish constellation shows an account being retweeted hundreds of times. Now..
[Thread]1/ As mentioned before, but delayed slightly due to food poisoning 🤢, what follows is an analysis of the hashtag "Strong Turkiye" which began trending as a response to the hashtag 'help turkey' on 2nd August. As expected, it shows signs of manipulation and co-ordinated
2/ activity. For some context, the hashtag help Turkey, which I analysed previously, sprung up as a response to wildfires in Turkey. The hashtag prompted an angry response from the Turkish authorities, & the hashtags "we don't need help" & "strong Turkey" emerged. #disinformation
3/ This sample includes around 20,000 interactions involving 9100 unique accounts extracted on 2nd August. First up, signs of deliberate signal boosting of a hashtag by generating high volumes of retweet and mentions. If you look below, you will see three clusters/communities