Facebook outlines actions taken against “inauthentic behavior” originating in Russia and targeting African countries, including Sudan, Libya, and Madagascar
and with the help of Facebook/FSBook, of course. I hope Africa is at least trying to stop this, because this is war. Russia wants Africa. https://twitter.com/... Michael Weiss / @michaeldweiss : See our report on Prigozhin's activities in Libya — we posted the internal docs showing some of these Facebook accounts, created to boost Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, among others. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Adam Mosseri / @mosseri : Today we removed three networks of accounts, pages and groups for engaging in foreign interference on Facebook and Instagram. They originated in Russia and targeted eight countries across Africa. More details below. https://newsroom.fb.com/... Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : To its credit, Facebook has gotten much better at shutting down foreign disinformation campaigns since 2016. Sure hope this team is empowered to stop domestic manipulation, too! https://newsroom.fb.com/... Olivia Gazis / @olivia_gazis : Worth observing that Prigozhin & IRA are wholly undeterred by U.S. actions that have included: 1)Indictment by DOJ/Special Counsel 2)Treasury sanctions for both 2016 & 2018 3)Being taken offline by NSA/Cybercom in 2018 Says much about efforts to change Russia's behavior. https://twitter.com/... Michael Bennet / @michaelbennet : While Russia fine tunes its disinformation tactics ahead of the 2020 elections, @senatemajldr continues to block urgent election security bills. This gridlock is a threat to our democracy and a gift to Vladimir Putin. https://www.nytimes.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : Prigozhin led the same team behind the 2016 U.S. election interference campaign https://twitter.com/... Davey Alba / @daveyalba : NEWS: Facebook removed three Russia-backed influence networks aimed at African countries. FB says the networks were linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin & Stanford Internet Observatory is attributing (w/ moderate conference) one of the networks to the Wagner Group. https://www.nytimes.com/... @nytimes : Russia's disinformation efforts are evolving, an enormous new Facebook campaign in Africa shows, with implications for the 2020 U.S. election https://www.nytimes.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : 🚨 New Research on Russian Activity in Africa 🚨 Shelby lead a team of Stanford Internet Observatory analysts looking for organized disinformation in Africa and found a campaign we attribute to the Russian paramilitary, the Wagner Group. Read the thread for much more... https://twitter.com/... Renee DiResta / @noupside : The scale, scope, and methods of the operations are important to understand independently of anything related to U.S. 2020; hundreds of thousands to millions of people followed the pages (~1.7MM Likes on what SIO saw), and it was more a persuasion program than ‘societal division’ Shelby Grossman / @shelbygrossman : Libya: This operation - the one operation we attribute to Wagner Group - supported 2 potential future political competitors. It had Egyptian Page managers. The most interesting Pages included Gaddafi nostalgia content, like this Page. These Pages bolstered Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. pic.twitter.com/E78dOOP8ZQ Renee DiResta / @noupside : Most know Prigozhin as the man behind the Internet Research Agency, which ran numerous influence operations over the past ~6 yrs, notably in the U.S. (incl during Election 2016) and in the Ukraine. He was indicted by the DOJ for the U.S. activity. https://www.justice.gov/... Naveed Jamali / @naveedajamali : In order to run a disinformation campaign across social media, Russia uses real people (likely in America) to accomplish this. From day one, I've always said Russia has a US-based network of agents — I know, I was one. https://www.nytimes.com/... Renee DiResta / @noupside : We have released a whitepaper detailing the specifics of the operation across 6 countries, which can be found here: https://fsi-live.s3.us-west- 1.amazonaws.com/... and Facebook's post is here http://newsroom.fb.com/...
Today the SIO team and Facebook are reporting a takedown of an influence operation; our analysis involved 73 pages that spanned 6 countries in Africa linked to a range of entities connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin, including the Wagner Group. Our post: https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu…
Today Facebook removed dozens of Facebook Pages that my Stanford Internet Observatory team has spent the past few weeks analyzing. The Pages are attributed to entities linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, and targeted 6 African countries. https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/ ...
More broadly, however, the franchising of disinformation operations to local operators who may not even know who's paying them, and who may look quite legitimate and have the appropriate home country name in the transparency field is a significant challenge to detection...
The Pages suggest that IO activities are being run out of multiple orgs...also, by local contractors. This makes them harder to detect. These Pages, many of which masqueraded as local news, produced almost universally positive coverage of Russia's activities in the countries. pic…
Facebook suspends three networks of Russian accounts, with a reach of more than one million followers, tied to a Putin ally for meddling in politics of eight African countries https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Russia is gearing up for another phase of major mind-f*ckery with African populations—and with the help of Facebook/FSBook, of course. I hope Africa is at least trying to stop this, because this is war. Russia wants Africa. https://twitter.com/...
See our report on Prigozhin's activities in Libya — we posted the internal docs showing some of these Facebook accounts, created to boost Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, among others. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Today we removed three networks of accounts, pages and groups for engaging in foreign interference on Facebook and Instagram. They originated in Russia and targeted eight countries across Africa. More details below. https://newsroom.fb.com/...
To its credit, Facebook has gotten much better at shutting down foreign disinformation campaigns since 2016. Sure hope this team is empowered to stop domestic manipulation, too! https://newsroom.fb.com/...
Worth observing that Prigozhin & IRA are wholly undeterred by U.S. actions that have included: 1)Indictment by DOJ/Special Counsel 2)Treasury sanctions for both 2016 & 2018 3)Being taken offline by NSA/Cybercom in 2018 Says much about efforts to change Russia's behavior. https://…
While Russia fine tunes its disinformation tactics ahead of the 2020 elections, @senatemajldr continues to block urgent election security bills. This gridlock is a threat to our democracy and a gift to Vladimir Putin. https://www.nytimes.com/...
NEWS: Facebook removed three Russia-backed influence networks aimed at African countries. FB says the networks were linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin & Stanford Internet Observatory is attributing (w/ moderate conference) one of the networks to the Wagner Group. https://www.nytimes.com…
Russia's disinformation efforts are evolving, an enormous new Facebook campaign in Africa shows, with implications for the 2020 U.S. election https://www.nytimes.com/...
🚨 New Research on Russian Activity in Africa 🚨 Shelby lead a team of Stanford Internet Observatory analysts looking for organized disinformation in Africa and found a campaign we attribute to the Russian paramilitary, the Wagner Group. Read the thread for much more... https://twi…
The scale, scope, and methods of the operations are important to understand independently of anything related to U.S. 2020; hundreds of thousands to millions of people followed the pages (~1.7MM Likes on what SIO saw), and it was more a persuasion program than ‘societal division’
Libya: This operation - the one operation we attribute to Wagner Group - supported 2 potential future political competitors. It had Egyptian Page managers. The most interesting Pages included Gaddafi nostalgia content, like this Page. These Pages bolstered Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. …
Most know Prigozhin as the man behind the Internet Research Agency, which ran numerous influence operations over the past ~6 yrs, notably in the U.S. (incl during Election 2016) and in the Ukraine. He was indicted by the DOJ for the U.S. activity. https://www.justice.gov/...
In order to run a disinformation campaign across social media, Russia uses real people (likely in America) to accomplish this. From day one, I've always said Russia has a US-based network of agents — I know, I was one. https://www.nytimes.com/...
We have released a whitepaper detailing the specifics of the operation across 6 countries, which can be found here: https://fsi-live.s3.us-west- 1.amazonaws.com/... and Facebook's post is here http://newsroom.fb.com/...