France & Russia Caught Spreading Disinfo
Tags: Disinformation, France, Facebook, Russia

On Dec 15th, #Facebook removed three separate networks (2 operated from Russia and 1 from France) for violating policy against foreign or government interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) on behalf of a foreign or government entity.

Individuals linked to the French military and Russia used fake accounts to wage a covert disinformation campaign in the Central African Republic ahead of elections there this month. In total FB removed 358 Facebook accounts, 51 Pages, 32 Groups and 32 Instagram accounts. These activity targeted primarily the Central African Republic and Mali, and to a lesser extent Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad, Madagascar, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, South Africa and the CAR diaspora in France. Also, Libya, Sudan and Syria.

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-france-russia/

How they got identified?

1. In each case, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts as a central part of their operations to mislead people about who they are and what they are doing, and that was the basis for the action.

These people were taken down based on behavior rather than content

2. These network targeted people outside of their country of origin, primarily targeting Africa, and also some countries in the Middle East.

3. France and Russia actively engaged with one another by befriending, commenting and criticizing the opposing side for being fake.

The Russian network was an attempt to rebuild their operations after our October 2019 takedown, which coincided with a notable shift in focus of the French campaign to begin to post about Russia’s manipulation campaigns in Africa.

Network Details:

France:

Presence: #FB removed 84 Facebook accounts, 6 Pages, 9 Groups and 14 Instagram accounts.

The network targeted primarily the Central African Republic and Mali, and to a lesser extent Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Chad.

Reach: About 5,000 accounts followed one or more of these Pages, about 1,600 accounts joined one or more of these Groups and around 200 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.

Russia: (1)

Presence: #FB removed 63 Facebook accounts, 29 Pages, 7 Groups and 1 Instagram account . The network targeted primarily on the Central African Republic (CAR), and to a lesser extent on Madagascar, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, South Africa and the CAR diaspora in France.

Reach: About 263,000 accounts followed one or more of these Pages, around 29,000 people joined one or more of these Groups

Ads: About $38,000 was spent for ads on Facebook and Instagram paid for primarily in South African rand and US dollars.

Russia: (2)

Presence: FB removed 211 Facebook accounts, 126 Page, 16 Groups and 17 Instagram accounts. This network originated in Russia and focused primarily on Libya, Sudan and Syria.

Reach: About 5.7mn accounts followed one or more of these Pages, 64,500 accounts joined one or more of these Groups and about 99,500 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.

Ads: Around $186,000 was spent for ads on Facebook paid for primarily in US dollars and rubles.

The main difference between the Network of France and Russia was that, France depended mostly on Fake accounts run by French Nationals, while Russian Network depended mostly on locals of the target nations.

From the above stats we can see that a lot of genuine people became part of this campaign unknowingly. So, we suggest that you should thoroughly look through a social media page or account before following it.