Facebook says Russia is still the largest producer of disinformation, in a report that details 150 operations that the company has disrupted since 2017
and many other social networks — arguably fits that definition. More here: https://www.cjr.org/... Nate Persily / @persily : So difficult to summarize succinctly but so incredibly important that this description of four years of Facebook takedowns of influence operations has been published. https://about.fb.com/... Ben Nimmo / @benimmo : JUST OUT: major IO Threat Report on 2017-2020 Facebook takedowns of coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Threats, trends, and even a leader board. https://about.fb.com/... https://twitter.com/... Ben Nimmo / @benimmo : So when you put four years' worth of covert influence ops together, what are the trends? More operators are trying, but more operators are also getting caught. The challenge is to keep on advancing to stay ahead and catch them. https://twitter.com/... Sam Jeffers / @wrklsshrd : I've read this report (and others like it) and they never mention real accounts reached. It's only “number of operations detected”. A more useful account would say “here's how many users saw the stuff we detected this year vs. last year”. https://twitter.com/... Michael McFaul / @mcfaul : This is a big, important report. Well done @olgs7 @ngleicher & rest of @Facebook team: https://twitter.com/... Jonathan Zittrain / @zittrain : Facebook naturally has a window that few others do into IO ("influence" or “information” operations) on social networks, focusing on CIB ("coordinated inauthentic behavior," as compared to judging content on its own terms). This is a really interesting report on what it's seen. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Good report. I would only suggest a headline edit to: “Facebook is still the biggest player in disinformation.” Also this Facebook statement easily refuted with FB India (WSJ report) or FB covering up CA who worked alongside Facebook and Trump campaign (SEC complaint). https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : So I say this all of to you to state what may not be obvious. Facebook has been a major operator in these influence operations. They covered up issues. They did in India, too, according to WSJ. Until we hold Facebook accountable, we're going to be back here again and again. /3 Nick Clegg / @nickclegg : We've learned a lot since 2016 about how malicious actors attempt to use social media to cause harm. Today, Facebook released its global Threat Report on Influence Operations. These learnings & threat trends can help us prepare for what comes next. https://about.fb.com/... Marietje Schaake / @marietjeschaake : Russia, Iran, Myanmar, USA and Ukraine top the list of coordinated inauthentic behavior takedowns reported by Facebook. Not a great list to be on America ↘️ https://twitter.com/... @olgs7 : 3/ We've come a long way since 2017 - our investigations teams have grown, our knowledge of threat actors has expanded, and our understanding of the influence ops problem has evolved. Today's report is a chance to take a step back, reflect on what we've seen, and to look forward @olgs7 : 9/ The report also features a case study specifically looking at the US 2020 election and the networks originating from primarily Russian, Iranian, and domestic US actors that our IO investigative team exposed and disrupted. https://twitter.com/... @olgs7 : 13/ As we look back, we have certainly seen IO threat actors adapt, but the defender community of independent researchers, investigators and policy teams in government and at social media platforms, journalists, academics, and many more has advanced to stay ahead @olgs7 : 4/ This report draws on over 150 CIB CIB networks that we found and disrupted on our platform since 2017. They came from over 50 countries and operated in dozens of languages providing a useful window to into influence operations trends https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : I'm also glad to see that they didn't pull their punches on including the USA in the list of top sources of influence operations. U-S-A! U-S-A! https://twitter.com/... Alicia Wanless / @lageneralista : What I really appreciate about this report is that it starts to look at trends across time - the world is awash with case studies on influence operations, we need more meta studies to make sense of the issue: https://twitter.com/... Catherine Herridge / @cbs_herridge : Facebook has released its threat report on “The State of Influence Operations 2017-2020” and removed over 150 operations originating from +50 countries. Calls domestic manipulation + foreign interference “serious challenges” @CBS_Herridge reports. https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : The most useful part might be the index of all of Facebook's CIB takedowns, which is linked from the end of the PDF. Direct link to the XLSX here: https://about.fb.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : My former colleagues at Facebook have summarized the changes in how influence operations are reflected on the platform since this work started in 2017. I'm hopeful such reporting can become regularized across the industry like surveillance transparency did. https://t.co/7ils3xttD0 Nathaniel Gleicher / @ngleicher : 5/ Tactics also trickle down from CIB to less sophisticated threat actors. Analyzing these enforcements and responses helps reveal how we've all done against this threat, what worked/what didn't, and offers lessons that could be useful in other threat spaces. Nathaniel Gleicher / @ngleicher : 12/ Some of the most-targeted communities have also generated the most determined civil-society defenders. Ukraine, the US, the UK and Myanmar are all highly-targeted countries, and all also have strong communities of civil society experts that are leading work to counter IO. https://twitter.com/... Nathaniel Gleicher / @ngleicher : 4/ This report is focused on CIB — covert IO. It's focused there in part b/c that's where we've seen the most aggressive adversarial adaptation by threat actors and determined response by defenders across society. Nathaniel Gleicher / @ngleicher : 1/ This morning we shared our 2017-2020 IO Threat Report, which analyzes all of the CIB operations we have taken down and announced publicly over the past four years. https://about.fb.com/... Nathaniel Gleicher / @ngleicher : 2/ We've been publicly sharing our findings about CIB takedowns for 3+ years with regular tactical releases focused on each operation and its tactics. Today's Report offers a strategic look at the threat trends we've seen since 2017 and recs for how to counter IO going forward. https://twitter.com/... Andy Stone / @andymstone : Check out Facebook's new report on our efforts over the last four years to address coordinated inauthentic behavior with additional analysis on what's changed, how threats have evolved and what's worked in combatting them. https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This report closes a four-year loop that began when Facebook first identified coordinated fake-account amplification around the US election and stood up a dedicated 'info ops' team in 2017 to counter state actors like Russia's IRA. By 2019, outside research had found the number of countries running political disinformation campaigns had more than doubled to 70 since 2017, with Facebook the #1 social network for it.
What changed with 'The State of Influence Operations 2017-2020' is that Facebook turned its internal takedown log into public doctrine: over 150 disrupted networks, a ranked leaderboard with Russia on top and Iran, Myanmar, USA and Ukraine behind it, and Ben Nimmo's team publishing tactics rather than just removing accounts.
First-order effects
- The five governments named at the top of Facebook's takedown list — Russia above all — now have their covert playbook mapped publicly by the platform itself, raising the cost of reusing the same fake-account tactics there.
- Facebook naming the USA among the top sources of coordinated inauthentic behavior complicates Washington's position as the platform's chief critic on disinformation.
Second-order effects
- Rival social networks face pressure to match Facebook's disclosure standard — a four-year, operation-by-operation ledger — or cede the transparency narrative to it.
- Governments flagged in the report gain a ready-made dataset for sanctions, attribution, and diplomatic protest, shifting influence operations from invisible to deniable-but-documented.
Third-order effects
- If platform-published threat reporting becomes routine, the major social networks effectively become self-appointed intelligence agencies whose annual reports shape which states are labeled disinformation producers — a role regulators have yet to contest.
- The pattern holds past the report: Russia-backed falsehoods around the invasion of Ukraine later put the same tech giants on the defensive again ([[a:976329]]), suggesting takedowns disrupt networks but not the underlying state demand for influence operations.
The trend: Influence operations are being institutionalized as a standing cat-and-mouse discipline, with platform transparency reports emerging as the primary public record of state-run disinformation.