Iranian bots behind 1,300 pro-independence X accounts

13 comments

1. Wanna bet China is also a part of it? The new Axis (China-Russia-Iran) is doing everything they can to destabilise Western nations.

2. “After the internet was switched back on in Iran on June 29th, many of the accounts began posting pro-Iranian content and narratives.

   According to the Cyabra report: “The fake accounts systematically promoted a blend of pro-Scottish independence, anti-Brexit, and pro-Iranian narratives. To enhance credibility and blend into real conversations, they used AI-generated content, repurposed materials, and strategically employed popular hashtags and keywords.”

   You might have accidentally tipped them off there lads.

3. Iran is also perpetuating the small boats issue. These should be seen as acts of war. Nothing we can do really about China except set up our own bot farms and reply in kind but there’s certainly a lot we can do about Iran.

4. Copy/paste from a relevant previous post about the government ‘Disinformation Diplomacy’ inquiry. There is significant literature on the topic of computational propaganda. It’s happening, and it’s almost certainly influencing your family, your politicians, journalists, everyone.

   Previous post:

   I came across this after searching whether anything came out of the infamous Russia Report from a few years back. It turns out a few things have happened, the most interesting to me being an inquiry starting this year to look at ‘how malign actors are seeking to undermine democracy’.

   I downloaded the transcript of the first session and was absolutely gripped by some of the contents. I think everyone with an interest in political discourse should read this and follow the progress of the inquiry.

   https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8818/disinformation-diplomacy-how-malign-actors-are-seeking-to-undermine-democracy/publications/

   Here’s one interesting section as an example. From Professor Martin Innes, Director of the Security, Crime and Intelligence Innovation Institute:

   “I think you can break it down into three basic techniques that are always used. The first is information shaping. That is where you manipulate the information to change how people think, feel or behave. That is your classic disinformation kind of thing, where you manipulate the information.

   The second strand is audience shaping, which is where you try to influence the perceptions, beliefs or values of the audience to change how they will interpret information. That is a particular strand that comes from China’s cognitive warfare strategy, but it is also the Russian concept of reflexive control.

   The third key strand is environment shaping, where you try to shape the environment itself. In the previous question, we were talking about bots. One thing you do with bots is flood the zone to drown out the facts. You just throw vast numbers of bots at an issue in order to create a lot of noise. It is important to understand the scale at which this is happening.

   There is a Russian information operation called Doppelganger, which is a very visible, noisy operation that operates thousands and thousands of bots. It buys them online, deploys them and doesn’t expect them to survive. They will get squished, but there are always replacements coming through. As an example, last year we detected them trying to amplify the conspiracies and health rumours about the Princess of Wales. That was about simply jumping on a hashtag or a trending issue in order to get their information into the media stream.

   There are a range of different techniques that are operating, some of which are highly targeted and try to hit particular decision makers and shape them, as well as trying to shape public understanding of particular issues. It is that full-spectrum capability that is quite important to understanding what is going on at the moment.”

   Whilst I’ve seen bits and pieces looking at how social media manipulation might be being used by foreign states, this is the first time I’ve seen the UK government looking seriously at the issue and speaking to credible experts about it.

5. > Using artificial intelligence, Cyabra, which is based in Tel Aviv, analysed posts from 5,083 X profiles, finding 3,751 to be authentic, while 1,332 – or 26% – were deemed to be ‘fake’.

   Can they use AI to find how many X accounts are Israeli bots?

   Didn’t they recently say 70%+ of X accounts in general were bots? So 26% is a huge under representation, Iran should up their game.

   Are we just going to continually get stories like this now which attempt to make out like anything against the establishment is actually just bots? We never get articles detailing how many pro-(whatever the establishment position is) are bots.

   Every entity on the world stage is using bots for disinformation campaigns online and everyone knows this. You’re not going to shock people by pointing at one side of this and going ‘look! They’re all bots!’

6. Least surprising reveal of all time, next you’ll be telling me Russia is promoting mass migration to Europe!

7. this isn’t surprising. the pro-indie movement is full of foreign intereference, especially the SNP. alex salmond, the former leader, literally went on RT (the russia state propaganda news show) and defended it against accusations of being Russian propaganda.

8. >”Research carried out by disinformation firm Cyabra… which is based in Tel Aviv…”

   Disinformation firm indeed.

9. based Iran for exploiting vulnerabilities of free internet

   regarding the “inauthentic accounts”, wait until they find regular people have anonymous accounts

10. Disinformation is one of the biggest threats of the current era. I know we like to think it just from other countries but it’s also closer to home. Why do you think the ultra wealthy are so invested in the media and social media?

11. What if – it is actually these news reports themselves of supposed “bots and disinformation schemes” from far away lands that are the real disinformation campaigns?

    Would you really trust an Israeli company, Cyabara, to report truthfully about Iran, which they had attacked. I will repeat that – Israel attacked Iran. Now they want us to think that Iran is behind bot disinformation campaigns promoting Scottish independence?

    Israel is the one with a long history information meddling. It even has a term for it – Hasbara.

12. Iran was a country that the British state enthusiastically ruined in 1953 over oil. If they want to dissolve the same demented state in return, I can only support them…

13. This needs a big dose of salt, as the allegation comes from an Israeli company, Israel is hostile towards Iran and Israel has an extremely sophisticated and targeted propaganda programme of its own. They will absolutely be reporting on this in a way that maximises the “Iran bad” interpretation.

    It does seem very likely that these accounts were hosted in Iran, they are probably sold on the open grey market to propagandists. Imo it’s more likely that they were actually operated by Russians, who have a genuine interest in destabilising the UK. Iran doesn’t really, European powers have been a diplomatic counterweight to US hostility, and weakening us or making us more hostile to them goes against Iranian interests.

    Of course it goes in favour of Israeli interests, they want US counterbalances to be weakened so they can keep aggressing other states in the region (such as Iran), which is why we should be careful about following the Israeli interpretation of the facts.

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