Facebook reports on the removal of networks that harass many people

Meta / Facebook is today to fix the world about how his efforts to remove false networks and enemies from his platform are progressing. The social networking site has released a new report saying it has successfully shut down several Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) networks. But in addition to all the false network networks operating in succession, the company has also reviewed its response to other risks. This includes Brigading – using negative comments and posting posts to block personal posts – and Mass Reporting, while Facebook anti-violence tools are used as a tool. This is another step forward in the many ways the company announced in September, when it promised dealing with many social ills what happened on his platform.

With Brigading, the company removed what it described as “accounts from Italy and France” that targeted medical professionals, journalists and government officials. Facebook is said to have followed the actions of a European anti-vaccine group called “V_V,” adding that its members used a number of fake accounts to “make numerous comments” from individuals and media organizations “to intimidate and suppress their views.” In addition, the articles included photographs showing the swastika appearing on the faces of prominent doctors and accusing them of supporting the Nazi party.

In Vietnam, Facebook terminated a network that was used to crack down on anti-government activists and users. The network will provide “hundreds – sometimes thousands – of complaints against their demands through our aggressive system.” Terrorists have also created recurring accounts of users who want to cancel the ban and claim that the actual account is the same as a fake account. Facebook added that some of these false accounts were simply identified and suspended with the company’s only testing tools.

With regard to the oldest methods of Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior, the company lowered the networks in Palestine, Poland, Belarus and China. The first was said to be linked to Hamas, while the second was designed to increase tensions during the border security crisis. In a press conference, Facebook reported that the Polish internet had excellent working security and, to date, has not been able to bind to a real national organization. However, the Belarussian network had very little operational security, so the company tied the knot to the Belarusian KGB.

The last network, the Chinese, has enabled Facebook to spread the depth of the experience based on the depth of what happened. In its report, the company alleges that the group fabricated a lie about Swiss biologist Wilson Edwards who wrote articles against the US and WHO. 48 hours later, and his comments were taken by Chinese journalists, and interviewed by senior officials. But there was no evidence that Wilson Edwards was present, which led to the platform closing the account.

Researchers found that Edwards’ is “a work that encourages the masses, but not the many,” involved “workers in Chinese construction companies on four continents.” Facebook wanted to make it clear that Edwards’ comments were not organically related, and that they were there when the posts were made by state media when things became popular.

One of the things Facebook discovered was the use of training tools that can be used to train potential members of the Internet. The V_V network, for example, printed videos through its Telegraph channels which encourage users to change the fonts in keywords so that they are not captured and filtered. The people behind the Chinese network, too, sometimes unwittingly write notes from their leaders, written in Indonesian and Chinese, offering advice on how to promote this.

In addition, Facebook has announced that it has launched a tool, through CrowdTangle, to support OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) researchers learn disinformation networks. This includes keeping track of what the company has downloaded, and allowing a small list of other eligible people to review. To date, it has been the Digital Forensic Research Lab teams at Atlantic Council, Stanford Internet Observatory, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Graphika and Cardiff University.

Facebook believes that providing more detail and transparency of how it accesses the network will help OSINT community researchers to track better in the future.