Welcome to the Disinfo Cloud Digest. This past week, Twitter and Facebook revealed a number of recently removed state-linked operations and networks and announced efforts to improve data access for researchers. Read on for these news articles as well as some related events around social media platforms. 

But first, we’d love your feedback on the Digest Cloud Digest—please fill out this short 8-question survey! 

Also, InVID/WeVerify will host two free tutorials, supported by an award from the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge, which will focus on:

  • Their content verification plugin, including newly released features like the verification assistant, social network analysis, and video and image verification. It will take place on Wednesday, December 8 at 12:00pm EST/EDT. Register here.

  • Their new deepfake detection service, including the technology behind it and their ongoing plans in the AI4Media project. It will take place on Thursday, December 16 at 11:00am EST/EDT. Register here.

Finally, these funding opportunities may be of interest:

  • The U.S. Mission to Moldova is funding projects to develop high-quality Romanian and Russian language TV content. $500,000 available per award. Submissions due by January 31, 2022. 

  • The U.S. Mission to Turkey is providing country-wide grants to assist Turkish media as well as media consumers in identifying and responding to mis/disinformation. Up to $75,000 available, per award. Submissions due by February 4, 2022. 

  • U.S. Embassy Freetown is funding projects to improve journalism and media literacy. Up to $24,999 available per award. Submissions due by February 28, 2022.

  • The U.S. Mission to Germany is funding projects that build resilience to disinformation, including through media literacy. Up to $15,000 available per award. Submissions due by March 20, 2022. 

  • U.S. Embassy Yaounde is providing small grants for media literacy. Up to $100,000 available per award. Submissions due by August 14, 2022.

  • The U.S. Mission to Panama is providing small grants to counter disinformation and improve cybersecurity. Up to $50,000 available, per award. Submissions due by August 30, 2022.
  • The European Commission will provide €1.76 million in funding to a “European Newsroom,” a new Brussels-based initiative to promote cross-border collaboration between 16 European news agencies, with an initial focus on bolstering the multilingual European information space (EURACTIV).

  • The Lithuanian government is challenging China, withdrawing from economic cooperation agreements and deepening ties with Taiwan, in an apparent effort to refocus US attention on Eastern Europe and ensure deterrence against Russian aggression (Carnegie Moscow Center).

  • Israel’s state comptroller uncovered widespread use of inauthentic coordinated networks to amplify domestic political parties during elections (Haaretz).

  • While Kenya’s diverse media landscape poses a medium to low risk of spreading misinformation, it would benefit from additional measures to improve information integrity, including adopting industry wide standards on editorial independence and transparency around funding sources (Global Disinformation Index).

  • The Philippines remains exposed to disinformation ahead of its 2022 presidential election, exacerbated by low media literacy among youths, highlighting the need for greater research to map and address vulnerabilities (Lowy Institute).

  • Google will halt election ads two months ahead of the Philippines 2022 presidential election, in light of concern that political advertising and disinformation campaigns are undermining election integrity (France 24).

  • Mis/disinformation is contributing to widespread unrest across several European countries, with public anger against increased COVID-19 restrictions fueled by conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines (BBC).

  • Similar to other parts of the world, far-right groups in the Balkans are exploiting the COVID-19 anti-vaccination and protest movements to push hateful narratives and disinformation, particularly on BitChute, targeting groups including migrants, refugees, and the LGBTQIA+ community (Balkan Insights).

  • An influential member of the banned far-right group NS131 was convicted under terror laws for serving as the group’s head of propaganda, where he called for ethnic cleanings, attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community, and a race war (The Guardian).
  • Russia and China threaten democratic progress in Latin America and the Caribbean, including through their use of disinformation, predatory economic practices, and the export of authoritarian laws and practices to spread their influence, undermine the US, and shore up other authoritarian regimes (Medill News Service).

  • Russia and China used influence operations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to pursue their strategic goals, employing different narrative strategies while learning from one another, as seen with narrative overlap and circular amplification (CEPA).

  • Russia is escalating information operations against Ukraine amid growing fears of a potential conflict, with pro-Kremlin media, security services, and bots deploying various narratives, some of which have been recycled by US sources (CEPA).

  • The Chinese government has developed a sophisticated apparatus to counter coverage of its human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang province, using state-controlled media to spread narratives in several languages discrediting the claims, amplification by official government Twitter accounts, information laundering through foreign media organizations, and defensive trolls (Lawfare).

  • Chinese government media and pro-CCP actors targeted Canada’s 2021 federal election with a coordinated influence operation aimed at undermining support for specific candidates among targeted communities, highlighting the need for the Canadian government to examine the spread of disinformation across third-language media (Disinfo Watch).

  • The Chinese government’s ability to deeply influence Italian politics in its favor, often through diplomatic contacts and pro-CCP organizations, is particularly concerning given Italy's status as a G7 country and a founding member of the European Union (The Hill). 

  • China’s cyber policy is developed and implemented through a highly organized system headed by agencies specializing in propaganda and information control, and holds the long term goal of building technical self-reliance while manufacturing international consensus for digital authoritarianism (ASPI Strategist).

  • Authorities in China’s Henan province awarded tech firm Neusoft with a $782,000 contract to develop a surveillance system to track journalists, international students, and other targets of interest using 3,000 facial recognition cameras connected to national and regional databases, according to leaked documents (Reuters).

  • The Chinese government’s relative silence over coverage of tennis star Peng Shuai, who accused a high level CCP official of sexual assault, reveals the continued limits of state propaganda in effectively influencing international discourse around sensitive topics for Beijing (NYTimes).
  • The 2021 Summit for Democracy should place greater emphasis on countering disinformation and serve as the launching point for new initiatives, including a multilateral coalition of democracies to impose costs on malign state actors and renewed support for the Pledge for Election Integrity (Foreign Affairs).

  • The US should directly counter and compete with Chinese influence efforts by expanding its efforts to promote its value and image abroad while publicly discrediting and condemning Chinese propaganda and disinformation narratives through a coordinated, centralized mechanism (RAND).

  • The US plans to launch a multilateral initiative to limit the export of surveillance tools and technologies to authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, as they are often misused to suppress the rights of citizens, journalists, and others (WSJ).

  • The European Union launched its Global Gateway initiative, a development strategy to invest €300 billion globally in infrastructure, digital, and climate projects that would provide an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Reuters, BBC).

  • Information operations are a low-cost tool that afford malign actors the ability to weaken foreign governments by delegitimizing their authority, highlighting the importance of multilayered trust-building to respond (NATO).
  • Twitter released information regarding 4,365 removed accounts that were involved in state-linked information operations in Mexico, China, Russia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Venezuela (Twitter, Stanford Internet Observatory), including two Chinese-linked operations that sought to influence foreign opinion about Xinjiang by employing varied tactics like information flooding, influencer marketing, and inauthentic amplification (ASPI).

  • Facebook removed four global networks for violating its policy on Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB), many of which were linked to Hamas (Haaretz), Chinese COVID-19 disinformation efforts (The Hill, The Guardian), Belarusian KGB activities around the Belarus-Poland migrant crisis (Reuters), and European anti-vaccine groups (Graphika, Axios), highlighting the ever evolving threat landscape of disinformation (Meta, Washington Post). 

  • Facebook removed an inauthentic network on Facebook promoting a pro-Russian Georgia political party with ties to a far-right hate group (DFRLab).

  • Meta will begin providing outside researchers with access to an archive of content takedowns, providing greater insight into its efforts to counter coordinated inauthentic behavior (Protocol).

  • Twitter will launch a Moderation Research Consortium in 2022 to provide experts studying platform governance issues with access to unhashed information operations datasets, and will begin sharing similar data around other policy areas later in the year (Twitter).
  • Twitter is more resistant to mis/disinformation than other social media platforms largely due to its focus on news consumption which promotes users to seek higher quality information, as opposed to Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube, which have the opposite effect, highlighting the importance of platform design and features such as labeling (Phys.org).

  • Researchers can identify troll accounts, an increasingly common tool for influence operations, using loose coordination factors and distinct features unique to such accounts, although such an approach can be difficult to scale and requires access to platform data (WIRED).

  • Malign actors camouflage keywords when developing disinformation narratives to evade content moderation and reinforce in-group identity among their followers, highlighting the challenges in maintaining accurate blocking lists and the need to develop more advanced detection systems, including Optical Character Recognition (EU DisinfoLab).

  • Encrypted messaging apps (EMAs) can be an effective communication tool for activists, but can also be manipulated by malign actors to strategically disseminate political propaganda and disinformation to known community groups, highlighting the need to balance data privacy and activism with counter-disinformation efforts (Center for Media Engagement).
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Facebook? hosted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.



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