A purge of pro-U.S. bot accounts on Facebook and Twitter has given way to an inside look at covert propaganda on social media. In a new report, the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and Graphika analyze these pro-America accounts, including the kind of content they shared and the paltry influence they had.
In July and August, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram removed more than 100 accounts spreading pro-U.S. messages in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Middle East. The accounts—including fake people with images generated through artificial intelligence as well as sham news outlets—were kicked off Twitter for violating its policies on “platform manipulation and spam” and off Facebook for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
