Iranians masqueraded
as foreign journalists to push political messages online, new Twitter data
shows
The Twitter logo is displayed on an iPhone screen. (Alex
FLynn/Bloomberg News)
By Tony Romm
October 17, 2018 at 9:07 AM
Twitter accounts originating in Iran masqueraded as foreign
journalists and concerned U.S. citizens in their attempt to push political
messages on the social media site until they were suspended earlier this year,
according to research published Wednesday.
The analysis — performed by the Atlantic Council’s Digital
Forensic Research Lab — reflects an attempt by some in Iran to “spread regime
messaging through covert channels.” But researchers said the campaign had
proved less pervasive and effective than the coordinated disinformation
operation carried out by Russia, which focused its efforts instead on
exacerbating social and political tensions in the United States during the 2016
election.
"The scale and scope of the Russian troll farm
drastically outweighed the scale and scope of the Iranian troll farm,” said
Graham Brookie, the director and managing editor of the Digital Forensic
Research Lab.
In August, Twitter revealed it had suspended 770 accounts —
all appearing to originate in Iran, with potential ties to its government — for
engaging in “coordinated manipulation.” Facebook and Google-owned
YouTube similarly spotted and took down Iranian content, some of which had
been linked to state-owned media, according to an analysis by FireEye, a
security firm that first uncovered the activity.
At the time, the companies pledged more vigilance, as tech
giants continue to grapple with the rise of inauthentic activity and the threat
of disinformation with the 2018 midterms weeks away — and Twitter in
particular said it would “provide the public with transparency and context
on our efforts.”
To that end, Twitter on Wednesday announced it would
make available roughly 10 million tweets and 2 million images, live video
and other content that had been created by the Iranian accounts and thousands
of other, widely reported online trolls that previously had been tied to
Russia.
“It is clear that information operations and coordinated
inauthentic behavior will not cease,” wrote Vijaya Gadde, the legal, public
policy, and trust and safety lead at Twitter, and Yoel Roth, the company’s head
of site integrity, in a blog post. They stressed they would “continue to
proactively combat nefarious attempts to undermine the integrity of Twitter.”
Twitter also shared roughly 1.1 million tweets from Iran
with the Atlantic Council, which said it could not fully attribute the accounts
to the country’s government in its own report Wednesday. But researchers said
the Iranian operation relied on many identities, and at times bots, to push the
preferred messages of the Iranian government over a six-year period. That
includes attacks on Saudi Arabia and Israel and support for the Syrian
government, according to the DFR Lab’s review. Surprising researchers, these
accounts had been far less active on Twitter about a major touchstone in
U.S.-Iranian relations: the nuclear deal President Trump abandoned earlier this
year.
Some of the since-removed, Iran-tied Twitter accounts had
been explicit in their design, linking to government-funded media outlet
PressTV. But “far more,” according to the Atlantic Council, “claimed to be
operated by outlets in other countries.” One account, @realnienovosti1 —
Russian for “real news 1" — posted in that language, claimed to be based
in Moscow and tweeted about issues that mattered to Iran. Similar accounts with
suspected Iranian ties cloaked their efforts as French, Croatian and Spanish
reporters.
In other cases, the Atlantic Council found accounts in this
network that appeared to be everyday Americans — a game designer from
California, for example, or a reporter from Seattle. Often, these accounts
served to amplify state-run media, retweeting their content and linking to
Iranian news stories, DFR Lab found. But the Iranian network at times did
dabble in U.S. politics, including one account called @usresistance1, created in
April 2018, that advocated for Trump’s impeachment. At one point in August, the
account tweeted in support of an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in
Michigan whose family has roots in Egypt. Others sought to “blend into U.S.
anti-Trump communities,” Atlantic Council found.
For all its efforts, Iran’s social media accounts gained
little traction, failing to reach influencers and often only receiving fewer
than a dozen engagements, according to the Atlantic Council, which concluded:
“They were ill-adapted to the platforms they sought to use."
But the group praised Twitter for providing and releasing
the cache of Iranian and Russian tweets and other content, which researchers
can now further scrape for insight.
“I think more transparency around this information is
better than less transparency,” Brookie said, “and that’s not strictly limited
to foreign influence operations or domestic advertising. Consumers have a right
to have more information about the things they see that are presented to them.”
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