Russia’s Playbook for Social Media Disinformation Has Gone Global

Facebook shared information about the campaign with the lab before the posts were removed.

Last year, Facebook announced it had taken down two separate Iranian-linked disinformation campaigns. In October, the company said a campaign originating in Iran had been targeting people in the United States and Britain. In August, Facebook said it had found an influence operation that originated in Iran and Russia.

Two other disinformation campaigns that Twitter removed were from Venezuela, which is currently grappling with political turmoil as Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader, has declared himself the country’s acting president in a challenge to the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro. (Both men have taken to Twitter to champion themselves.)

One Venezuelan campaign that Twitter uncovered was made up of 764 accounts that posted about American politics and the midterm elections, while another network of 1,196 accounts posted political content targeted at Venezuelan citizens.

Twitter was able to determine that the domestic Venezuelan campaign was organized by the Venezuelan government because of digital clues linking the accounts to the country. The activity also followed specific guidelines that were laid out in a troll farm guide compiled by the country’s government and obtained by Bloomberg, a person familiar with the campaign said.

Twitter has said it is difficult to definitively tie accounts to specific countries or governments, though it uses information about how someone logs in and what kinds of content is posted to the account to determine its origin.

Twitter and Facebook made their announcements Thursday as part of an effort to increase transparency around the fake accounts the companies find on their platforms. Twitter, for example, has published new data on the issue periodically since last October as it has faced scrutiny over how its service can be gamed to sway people’s thinking. Twitter said that it challenges 8 million to 10 million suspicious accounts every week.

Twitter, Facebook and Google have been criticized by lawmakers, regulators and users around the world for not doing enough to curb disinformation.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/technology/twitter-disinformation-united-states-russia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss