Report: Number of countries using political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 since 2017; Facebook remains #1 social network for disinformation
In Vietnam, citizens were enlisted to post pro-government messages on their personal Facebook pages.
New York Times
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc here runs from detection to institutionalization. In 2017, Freedom House counted governments in 30 countries manipulating social media against critics, with elections in 18 possibly affected; two years on, the same methodology counts 70 — and Facebook remains the single most-used network for these campaigns.
Vietnam shows where this goes once it matures: the citizens enlisted to post pro-government messages on personal pages are the visible layer of an organized operation, later traced to the army's Force 47 online information warfare unit. Meanwhile, former Facebook officials say the company has repeatedly censored dissent there to keep government access — the platform is both the weapon and the negotiating table.
First-order effects
Facebook now faces coordinated manipulation operations from 70 governments at once, with its own reporting later documenting 150 disrupted operations since 2017 and naming Russia as the largest producer — moderation workload scales with state adoption, not with user growth.
Second-order effects
Governments that host large user bases gain leverage over the platform itself: the Vietnamese censorship allegations suggest compliance with state information campaigns becomes the price of continued access, turning content policy into a bilateral bargaining issue.
Third-order effects
If the doubling pattern holds, state information warfare stops being covert interference and becomes standing bureaucracy — dedicated military units like Force 47, citizen enlistment programs, and formalized platform negotiations — forcing regulators to treat disinformation as a governance problem rather than a moderation queue.
The trend: State-run disinformation is industrializing faster than platform enforcement can disrupt it, converting Facebook's content decisions into instruments of foreign policy.
Organised social media manipulation campaigns are now prevalent in 70 countries around world, (more than doubling from 28 in 2017) finds latest @oiioxford @polbots report #cypbertroops2019 https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/... https://twitter.com/...
26 countries with authoritarian regimes using computational propaganda as a tool of information control to help suppress public opinion finds new @oiioxford report #cybertroops2019 https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/... https://twitter.com/...
And $50 Billion in advertisers' investment to more than fund it! @slpng_giants “Facebook remains the platform of choice for social media manipulation, with evidence of formally organised campaigns taking place in 56 countries.” https://twitter.com/...
The number of countries with political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 in the last two years, with evidence of at least one political party or government entity in each of those countries engaging in social media manipulation. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Facebook remains the platform of choice for social media manipulation, with evidence of formally organised campaigns taking place in 56 countries” https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/...
At Least 70 countries have engaged in disinformation campaigns, study Finds. Most government-linked disinformation efforts were focused domestically. But at least 7 countries, incl Russia, Iran, and Saudi, had tried to influence views outside their borders https://www.nytimes.com…
This is important stuff. Despite much noise and posturing from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube we are no better off now than in 2016. As I've been saying, we are totally screwed. https://twitter.com/...
“To address [disinfo] you need to look at the algorithm and the underlying business model.” To do that we need government regulation. Without it, foreign adversaries and corrupt campaigns will continue to exploit those same vulnerabilities. https://www.nytimes.com/...