Twitter, Facebook see new disinformation tactics

Officials from Twitter and Facebook said Thursday that while they have not seen any “coordinated” efforts by malicious foreign groups to spread disinformation around the 2020 elections, tactics are changing and evolving.

“We have seen a change in tactics, and this in part is because of the success that we’ve had in clamping down on the inauthentic platform manipulations,” Nick Pickles, the director of global public policy strategy and development at Twitter, testified during a House Intelligence Committee virtual hearing.

One example given by Pickles of the new behavior is online Chinese actors unfavorably comparing the heavy U.S. police response to recent protests over the death of George Floyd to crackdowns on protesters in Hong Kong.

“That shift, from platform manipulation to overt state assets, is something that we have observed, and it reminds us we have to be vigilant that the challenges we faced in 2016 aren’t constant, and that this remains an evolving security challenge,” Pickles testified.

Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of security policy at Facebook, testified that his team was seeing “inauthentic behavior” around the COVID-19 pandemic and in connection to recent protests over the death of George Floyd.

“We definitely see the tactics in this space evolving, and we see the threat actors trying new efforts to get around the controls that are put in place,” Gleicher said.

He emphasized that while Facebook has not seen any “coordinated inauthentic behavior” from foreign nations targeting voting or voting systems, it was “definitely something we are monitoring.”

Facebook has seen other coordinated foreign activity that it has removed this year. Gleicher testified that Facebook had removed 18 inauthentic networks this year including three based in Russia, two from Iran, and two based in the United States. He also said Facebook removed around 1.7 billion fake accounts from its platform between January and March.

“We are up against determined adversaries, and we will never be perfect, but we will continue our vital work to stop bad actors and give people a voice,” Gleicher testified.