2022 is screeching to a halt, but a whole bunch of the issues we looked at over the year seem set to haunt us like some sort of Dickens-inspired morality tale with a missing punchline. So, we thought, why not offer our readers a quick look back at the main disinformation related issues that caught our attention and have a peek at what the ghost of Christmas future might one day want to discuss.
Roughly in order of anxiety inducing potential:
Anti-vaxx networks strike back:
You might be forgiven for thinking that we are done with Covid conspiracies. At the height of the pandemic, it looked like so many people thought the virus could be treated with drugs used to deworm animals that the vaccine’s effectiveness as a public health response would be at risk.
The spread of pseudoscience surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic is still a major issue online (as well as outside our office, where a committed band of anti vaxxers turn up every week to protest against masks/vaccines/science stuff - see photo below)
But what really worries us is how the real-world and online networks we saw forming around the anti-vaxx issue are repurposing and turning their attention to other causes popular with actors such as Russia; the most obvious being the war in Ukraine. It seems a little odd to us that online accounts that were so concerned about health are also also enormously concerned about heating bills.
“Chaos in a box”
In 2016, the world learnt that Russia had spent thousands on social media ads to cause confrontation in the US by inciting opposing sides of sensitive social/political issues to literally face off in the streets. In 2022, it became apparent that foreign actors no longer needed to rely on the permissions necessary for running ads to engage in such antics. In September, actors ideologically aligned with India’s ruling BJP, a religio-nationalist movement, sparked violence between the Hindu and Muslim communities in Leicester, and tried to do the same in other cities. We covered the events in a previous newsletter
Our investigation found that the playbook had evolved, there was no need to rely on Facebook ads because those behind the campaign had developed their own networks of accounts, media outlets and followers that resembled a ready-built eco-system of chaos; sort of like the evil twin of the Iraq-war era’s ineffectual “government-in-a-box”. Essentially, this development renders ineffective all the checks and balances Facebook put in place to regulate the potential for actors to use ads to incite political violence.
Tommy Robinson
Guess who also promoted inflammatory and Islamophobic narratives around Leicester? Britain's hard-right cheerleader, Tommy Robinson.
There hasn't been a single UK-based investigation we've run that hasn't run across channels and accounts dedicated to the UK’s most infamous hard-right poster boy. From fake reports about “woke” millennials trashing fields in Glastonbury, to this "alliance" with BJP influencers in the case of Leicester, Robinson hoovers up toxic narratives like a relative with a penchant for mince pies.
Robinson himself is not going away anytime soon. But perhaps more worrying, he has blazed a trial for others by showing that spouting hatred can earn you attention, power and, potentially, money. The US has many such characters, and we expect to see more elsewhere.
Tweaking Trump Tactics
At this point, Boris is an ex, ex British prime minister. But a Twitter network we identified that tried to use Trump-style tactics to undermine the Conservative party’s leadership election is still out there plugging away.
The sheer persistence of this network to #BringBorisBack would be almost admirable were it not for the fact that at some point it’s likely those behind it will likely be much more effective than they currently are. Bad actors manipulating or owning social media platforms to undermine democratic processes and promote their own interests is already a reality and set to increase.
The Middle East and Africa
The use of orchestrated Facebook networks has exploded across the Middle East. In Sudan, the networks we monitored (and helped shut) have re-grouped and expanded. In totalitarian states in the region, regimes have managed to game social media platforms to effectively crowd out any non-compliant voices. Meanwhile in Africa (and Iraq) we see China increasingly using a hybrid of social media and real-world manipulation to undermine commercial competitors (mainly infrastructure and mining companies from Western countries). (Check out the photo below of a demonstration in Iraq in support of a Chinese company being awarded a huge infrastructure contract).
Crypto
As crypto markets went into free fall, our head of research, Zouhir, noticed a significant increase in ads for dodgy crypto schemes on Twitter. This points to increased efforts to take advantage of Twitter in order to manipulate people for financial gain, despite Musk's claims that he’s battling the bots. You can read more about it in our newsletter here.
With crypto scams on the increase, it is likely that 2023 will be another year of heightened risk for unsuspecting investors, with scammers becoming even more creative in their attempts to take advantage of unsuspecting punters.
The Elephant in the Room
Talking about Twitter, less than two months after Elon Musk became the company's CEO, his promise to rid Twitter of fake accounts and “spam bots” seems like a bad joke. At least from our perspective, there seems to be a huge increase in malicious activity on the network, including ads being run by anti-vaxx groups. Keep in mind Twitter doesn’t have an equivalent of Facebook’s ads library, so there’s no obvious way to know who is running what ads (check the work of the good people at Who Targets Me, to see the sort of heroic effort that goes into tracking ads)
Conclusion
The lesson many bad actors took in 2022 was that digital manipulation works. To meet the challenge that good-faith politicians, journalists, democratic governments and companies not aligned to China (or Russia) will face in 2023 will depend on understanding how the manipulation works. We know that without the technical hacks they employ, their content just isn’t that popular.
So as we bid farewell to 2022, we want to thank all of you for supporting our efforts to combat online manipulation and for being a part of the fight back. Here's to a brighter, kinder and fairer 2023!