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Today Facebook announced the suspension of 3 networks targeting people in Africa: One linked to people associated w/ the French military targeting CAR/Mali, one linked to former IRA actors targeting CAR, and another linked to former IRA actors targeting Libya, Sudan, and Syria.
The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika have jointly published two reports on these operations. https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/africa-takedown-december-2020
Highlights from the IRA – Libya/Sudan/Syria report: 1.3 million users followed one of the Libya Pages. This part of the op was more sophisticated than Prigozhin’s 2019 efforts targeting Libya.
The operation appears to have franchised some activities out to the Libyan National Army's Moral Guidance Department media staff.
Several of the assets were linked to the Stop Terror media brand, which had a somewhat janky daily podcast.
The Facebook network (and Twitter accounts – Twitter suspended sockpuppet accounts adjacent to the FB activity) posted lots about the two Russian prisoners in Libya (released last week). One Page existed to hype a film about them.
The network worked aggressively to disrupt the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, claiming it was taken over by Muslim Brotherhood elements.
Interestingly, Facebook suspended a Page for Aljamahiria. Proekt (and SIO) have analyzed a document leaked to the Dossier Center describing how a Prigozhin-linked group purchased 50% of this longstanding pro-Gaddafi media brand. https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/libya-prigozhin
Sudan: The Sudan FB Pages, two of which had associated “news” websites that are ripe for further investigation by Sudan experts, positively framed both a Russian-Sudanese deal for a Russian naval base in Sudan and Russian activities in Sudan’s mining sector.
Syria: The Syria assets did what you would expect, pushing pro-Assad Russia-Syria partnership messaging. Interesting, one of the Pages told stories of the hardship of Syrian refugees, perhaps a strategy to encourage resettlement back in Syria.
The operation involved participation of Syrians living in Russia. This is similar to our findings in 2019, where the Prigozhin operation involved Sudanese studying in Russia. https://twitter.com/shelbygrossman/status/1189542784635555841
And there was also some fun stuff. A Vladimir Putin fan Page, for example.
Thanks to SIO and Graphika coauthors @k_ramali, @noUpside, Samantha Bradshaw, Lucas Beissner, William Healzer, & @irahubert1. Full report: https://github.com/stanfordio/publications/blob/main/20201215%20IRA-Libya-Sudan-Syria%20report.pdf
For more on the West Africa operations, see http://www.graphika.com/trollkombat . Facebook announcement here: https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-france-russia/
