Report: number of countries using political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 since 2017; Facebook remains #1 social network for disinformation
The trajectory continued after this report: by 2021 Facebook said it had disrupted 150 operations since 2017, naming Russia as the largest producer. The Vietnam coverage shows both sides of the platform's bind — the army's Force 47 runs pro-state Facebook Groups while activists and former officials say Facebook censors dissent there to keep government access.
First-order effects
Facebook now faces coordinated influence operations from more than twice as many national actors as in 2017, stretching its threat-integrity teams across far more simultaneous campaigns than the Russia-focused response it built after 2016.
Governments running these campaigns get a proven playbook at low cost: the same network that hosts their citizens also carries their propaganda, with no new infrastructure required.
Second-order effects
Facebook's enforcement choices become geopolitical bargaining chips — its willingness to remove pro-state content in repressive markets like Vietnam, rather than risk access, shows platform integrity decisions bending to market retention.
Rival platforms inherit displaced operations as moderation tightens on Facebook, forcing them to staff counter-disinformation capability they never planned for; advertisers meanwhile price brand-safety risk into placements adjacent to manipulated content.
Third-order effects
If the 2017-to-2019 doubling continues, state-run influence operations normalize into a standing feature of social platforms rather than an anomaly, pushing regulation of platform integrity content from voluntary policy toward statutory obligation.
The asymmetry between a few hundred moderators and seventy-plus state actors structurally favors the attackers, pointing toward platforms needing shared industry threat-intelligence bodies — or governments mandating them — because no single company can match state-scale coordination alone.
The trend: State-sponsored disinformation is scaling faster than platform defenses, turning social networks into contested infrastructure where enforcement decisions double as foreign-policy positioning.
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/...
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/...
New from me and @satariano this morning: A new report from Oxford shows the number of governments that use disinformation is now at least 70. Smaller countries are now being trained by operatives in Russia & elsewhere, sharing tactics globally https://www.nytimes.com/... https://…
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/...
“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/...
“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/...
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/...
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/...
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…