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Whoa, US military involvement as well. >>> 1. United States: We removed 39 Facebook accounts, 16 Pages, two Groups and 26 accounts on Instagram for violating

Whoa, US military involvement as well. >>> 1. United States: We removed 39 Facebook accounts, 16 Pages, two Groups and 26 accounts on Instagram for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. This network originated in the United States and focused on a number of countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen. The operation ran across many internet services, including Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. It included several clusters of fake accounts on our platforms, some of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems prior to our investigation. The majority of this operation’s posts had little to no engagement from authentic communities. We found this activity as part of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region. We’ve shared information about this network with independent researchers at Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, who have published their findings about this network’s activity across the internet on August 24, 2022. Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military.

Sephr 4y ago
We probably have the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act to thank for this.
neuronexmachina 4y ago
The report from Graphika has additional info about the US activity: https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford_internet_observatory_report_unheard_voice.pdf https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford... > Our joint investigation found an interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia. The platforms’ datasets appear to cover a series of covert campaigns over a period of almost five years rather than one homogeneous operation. > These campaigns consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran. The accounts heavily criticized Russia in particular for the deaths of innocent civilians and other atrocities its soldiers committed in pursuit of the Kremlin’s “imperial ambitions” following its invasion of Ukraine in February this year. To promote this and other narratives, the accounts sometimes shared news articles from U.S. government-funded media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites sponsored by the U.S. military. A portion of the activity also promoted anti-extremism messaging. > ... At the same time, Twitter and Meta’s data reveals the limited range of tactics IO actors employ; the covert campaigns detailed in this report are notable for how similar they are to previous operations we have studied. The assets identified by Twitter and Meta created fake personas with GAN-generated faces, posed as independent media outlets, leveraged memes and short-form videos, attempted to start hashtag campaigns, and launched online petitions: all tactics observed in past operations by other actors. > Importantly, the data also shows the limitations of using inauthentic tactics to generate engagement and build influence online. The vast majority of posts and tweets we reviewed received no more than a handful of likes or retweets, and only 19% of the covert assets we identified had more than 1,000 followers. The average tweet received 0.49 likes and 0.02 retweets. Tellingly, the two mostfollowed assets in the data provided by Twitter were overt accounts that publicly declared a connection to the U.S. military.
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  I don’t understand how the us military hasnt trained a model on engaging posts yet. With the amount of compute they probably have to throw at this you’d think they would have a sausage factory thats at least as good as your average reddit karma whore.
  - hzay 4y ago
    They probably have. They probably didn't get picked up by the "inauthentic" behavior spotters because they look authentic.
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      Does the US military have the power to suppress this kind of thing? Like, if they did get picked up, can they ensure that gets silently dropped?
- bawolff 4y ago
  > To promote this and other narratives, the accounts sometimes shared news articles from U.S. government-funded media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites sponsored by the U.S. military. This feels a bit shoddy for us gov. Its not like there is a shortage of sources saying russia is evil. I would have assumed that the us military would put more effort into appearing neutral in their secret propaganda campaign instead of being so obvious.
vosper 4y ago
There is at least one company in the US whose product is a platform that exactly mimics FB’s UI so that US military can train without having to have use real world FB accounts. Other users can role-play as members of the public responding to the pretend posts. I can’t remember the name of the company I am thinking of, but I interviewed someone who’d left it. I’ll see if I can dig it up.
- Closi 4y ago
  Presumably it's this? https://www.defenseone.com/business/2017/10/new-social-media-simulator-helping-us-troops-train-hybrid-war/141643/ https://www.defenseone.com/business/2017/10/new-social-media... https://www.cubic.com/solutions/training/synthetic-digital-solutions https://www.cubic.com/solutions/training/synthetic-digital-s...
- noduerme 4y ago
  Gotta say, ethics aside, something like that would be so much fun to build. No doubt ridiculously lucrative, too. Basically just: Here's $100 million, stand up a punching bag for us.
phendrenad2 4y ago
I find it unlikely that this is the only one. This is the only one they let FB take down.

Sephr 4y ago

We probably have the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act to thank for this.

neuronexmachina 4y ago

The report from Graphika has additional info about the US activity: https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford_internet_observatory_report_unheard_voice.pdf https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford... > Our joint investigation found an interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia. The platforms’ datasets appear to cover a series of covert campaigns over a period of almost five years rather than one homogeneous operation. > These campaigns consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran. The accounts heavily criticized Russia in particular for the deaths of innocent civilians and other atrocities its soldiers committed in pursuit of the Kremlin’s “imperial ambitions” following its invasion of Ukraine in February this year. To promote this and other narratives, the accounts sometimes shared news articles from U.S. government-funded media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites sponsored by the U.S. military. A portion of the activity also promoted anti-extremism messaging. > ... At the same time, Twitter and Meta’s data reveals the limited range of tactics IO actors employ; the covert campaigns detailed in this report are notable for how similar they are to previous operations we have studied. The assets identified by Twitter and Meta created fake personas with GAN-generated faces, posed as independent media outlets, leveraged memes and short-form videos, attempted to start hashtag campaigns, and launched online petitions: all tactics observed in past operations by other actors. > Importantly, the data also shows the limitations of using inauthentic tactics to generate engagement and build influence online. The vast majority of posts and tweets we reviewed received no more than a handful of likes or retweets, and only 19% of the covert assets we identified had more than 1,000 followers. The average tweet received 0.49 likes and 0.02 retweets. Tellingly, the two mostfollowed assets in the data provided by Twitter were overt accounts that publicly declared a connection to the U.S. military.

kjkjadksj 4y ago
I don’t understand how the us military hasnt trained a model on engaging posts yet. With the amount of compute they probably have to throw at this you’d think they would have a sausage factory thats at least as good as your average reddit karma whore.
- hzay 4y ago
  They probably have. They probably didn't get picked up by the "inauthentic" behavior spotters because they look authentic.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    Does the US military have the power to suppress this kind of thing? Like, if they did get picked up, can they ensure that gets silently dropped?
bawolff 4y ago
> To promote this and other narratives, the accounts sometimes shared news articles from U.S. government-funded media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites sponsored by the U.S. military. This feels a bit shoddy for us gov. Its not like there is a shortage of sources saying russia is evil. I would have assumed that the us military would put more effort into appearing neutral in their secret propaganda campaign instead of being so obvious.

vosper 4y ago

There is at least one company in the US whose product is a platform that exactly mimics FB’s UI so that US military can train without having to have use real world FB accounts. Other users can role-play as members of the public responding to the pretend posts. I can’t remember the name of the company I am thinking of, but I interviewed someone who’d left it. I’ll see if I can dig it up.

Closi 4y ago
Presumably it's this? https://www.defenseone.com/business/2017/10/new-social-media-simulator-helping-us-troops-train-hybrid-war/141643/ https://www.defenseone.com/business/2017/10/new-social-media... https://www.cubic.com/solutions/training/synthetic-digital-solutions https://www.cubic.com/solutions/training/synthetic-digital-s...
noduerme 4y ago
Gotta say, ethics aside, something like that would be so much fun to build. No doubt ridiculously lucrative, too. Basically just: Here's $100 million, stand up a punching bag for us.

phendrenad2 4y ago

I find it unlikely that this is the only one. This is the only one they let FB take down.