1/ We just released our Q2 Adversarial Threat Report, which includes insights into influence ops we disrupted from Russia, China, Turkiye, and Iran in Q2 this year. The full report is well worth the read, but I wanted to call out a few important takeaways for regulators and governments looking to have a meaningful impact:
… You can read all the juicy details and great policy ideas on a better website than this one

1/ Hoy compartimos nuestros investigaciones sobre operciones de influencia. Este informe incluye:

🇺🇦 Un resumen sobre OI (abierta y encubierta) de Rusia durante el invasión Ruso de Ucraina
🇧🇴🇨🇺🇷🇸 3 operaciones de Comportamiento Inauténtico Coordinado en Bolivia, Cuba, y Serbia 2/ Un hilo breve sobre las dos acciones contra Comportamiento Inauténtico Coordinado de nuestro informe publicado hoy about.fb.com/ltam/news/2023…:
🇧🇴 Una red operada por el gobierno de Bolivia y el partido Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS)
🇨🇺 Una red operada por el gobierno de Cuba

1/ Today we released our threat research into influence operations we disrupted. A few highlights:

🇺🇦 Lookback on Russia’s IO since invasion of Ukraine began (both covert + overt)
🇧🇴🇨🇺🇷🇸 Three new CIB takedowns in Bolivia, Cuba, and Serbia

🧵 2/ First, we dive into RU-origin covert IO, which remained largely ineffective but incr. relied on slapdash, unsophisticated techniques. In contrast, overt IO (eg from RU state media) declined significantly in popularity on platform after we took steps to limit their reach

1/ A short thread on two of the CIB operations in LatAm we detail in our new report today

🇧🇴 An operation linked to the current gov and the MAS party in Bolivia
🇨🇺 A government-linked operation in Cuba

about.fb.com/news/2023/02/m… 2/ In Bolivia, we removed 1600+ accounts, Pages, and Groups for violating our policies against both coordinated inauthentic behavior and coordinated abusive reporting (aka mass reporting). This network originated in Bolivia and focused primarily on domestic audiences in Bolivia

1/ We just released a report on two covert influence operations from Russia and China that targeted people in Europe around Russia’s war in Ukraine and people in the U.S. ahead of the midterms across a number of social media and spoofed media websites 🧵 about.fb.com/news/2022/09/r… 2/ The op from Russia sought to undermine support for Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees. It wasn’t effective, but it operated on a number of websites, social media services and petition sites

1/ Today we shared an update on the threats we are seeing targeting Ukraine. Our teams identified a small CIB operation targeting Ukraine with links to Russia and some new targeting by Ghostwriter in Ukraine about.fb.com/news/2022/02/s… 2/ In the last 48hrs, we uncovered a small CIB network targeting Ukraine across FB, IG, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VK, Odnoklassniki, and multiple websites. We saw links btwn this ntwk & another op we removed in Apr 2020 linked to NewsFront and SouthFront about.fb.com/news/2020/05/a…

Have you seen (false) claims of Southwest Airlines pilots walking off the job? In the spirit of @JaneLytv's debunks, I'll try to break down what seems to be happening 🧵

https://twitter.com/RobertANJax/status/1447199439517634569

There's NO evidence so far that a walkout (by ATC or pilots) is to blame for the widespread cancellations. The FAA already released a statement here:

1/ A few quick thoughts on reporting that equates clickbait farms with foreign troll farms seeking to manipulate public debate ahead of an election. The pages referenced here, based on our own 2019 research, are financially motivated spammers, not overt influence ops. 🧵 2/ Both of these are serious challenges, but they’re different. Conflating them doesn’t help anyone and plays into the hands of IO actors seeking to appear like they’re everywhere. You also can’t stop spammers w/defenses designed to counter overt IO, and vice-versa.

1/ Today, we shared an enforcement under a new protocol designed to extend our network disruptions to new types of adversarial groups. We still have a lot of work to do, but this is a first step into a new space about.fb.com/news/2021/09/r… 🧵 2/ We built our disruptions strategy on the idea that enforcement against tightly coordinated, highly adversarial groups could be more effective if we worked to identify and disrupt the network’s entire presence on our platform. A type of digital deterrence, if you will.

1/ Today we shared our IO Threat Report, an analytical paper that dives into the 150+ CIB takedowns across 50+ countries that FB’s Threat Intel team discovered over the past 3 years. The report IDs adversary TTPs, trends, and provides recs for tackling IO: about.fb.com/wp-content/upl… 2/ We also released a summary dataset of all of our takedowns since 2017 alongside the report itself. Check that out here (at the end of the report) about.fb.com/wp-content/upl…

My favorite thing here by far is the spherical one. #thiscorgidoesnotexist

https://twitter.com/artsiom_s/status/1370870649808420870

I stand corrected, the two that are 90% boopable snoots and the one extremely long boy are better:

https://twitter.com/artsiom_s/status/1370870816695586817

These are some great suggestions for much-needed reform to the tech pipeline in government. I’d add just a few more from my 6 yrs in civil service -> reform the background check process, find ways to incentivize & compete for talent, abandon outdated performance models

https://twitter.com/corizarek/status/1353847909444247555

We lose tons of candidates with vital tech and language proficiency in the multi-year wait for clearances. It suppresses diverse talent born overseas, people who have lived abroad, and weakens the federal talent pool. You won’t hire away from tech with 2yr waits for jobs

I asked @KembaWalden, who is an expert in election security legal issues, about some of the projects she's championing at @Microsoft - read on below #ShareTheMicInCyber #Election2020 👇 @KembaWalden created and lead The Law of Election Security, a roundtable of cyber and elections lawyers from the private sector, and state and federal governments to think creatively on how to improve laws around elections - most recently focused on legislating digital forgeries.

I was an intelligence analyst before I left government. After the intelligence failures that led to Iraq, the IC restructured its analytic tradecraft to emphasize standard evidentiary requirements, confidence language, peer review and alternative analysis 1/ This was especially important because it let the community adapt into new areas of study - without a systemic way to identify bias and groupthink, any analytic community is bound to make bad conclusions when faced with new data 2/