Back in January I blogged about how Iran had followed the Chinese in the creation and use of fake social media accounts to further their political agenda. A report by FireEye shows that Iran continues to exploit social medial to promote its political interests and influence other unsuspecting users - fake news appears to be back on the agenda!
The report identifies 'Liberty Front Press' as a fake news agency created by the Iranians to further their political interests, along with a number of associated counterfeit social media accounts. The site promotes Senator Bernie Sanders whilst making anti-trump sentiments. Clearly the Iranians and Russians were not collaborating on this at least! It seems likely the Iranians were worried about Trump's negativity towards the JCPOA and thought Mr Sanders would be the safer option. That has not worked out so well for them.
Other fake news agencies and websites with an Iranian footprint include the 'Real Progressive Front', 'The British Left' and 'Instituto Manquehue'. All these sites go out of their way to state that they are 'completely' or 'genuinely independent', in an attempt to deceive the reader. All have similar political narratives; anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian and pro-Iranian.
It appears the Social Media giants, like Facebook and Twitter, are finally trying to crack down on fake accounts. In the last week, it has emerged that YouTube has blocked 39 channels linked to the Iranian-state-run IRIB network and Facebook has announced the closing of 562 pages all linked to the Iranian regime.The regime, of course, denies all connection to the government.
Social media platforms have the difficult task of distinguishing fake from real accounts - but what identifies an account as suspicious? Whilst the algorithms used by the platforms are unknown, there are probably a number of contributing factors like low levels of original content (copying material from elsewhere), absence of personal photographs in profile pictures, accessing sites through a proxy, inflated number of followers or friends, and promotion of suspect websites. However, this is not easy and there will inevitably be collateral damage; I know a number of people who have had their real accounts shut down for unspecified 'suspicious' behavior. I am worried that banning customers that access platforms through a VPN will have a big impact on Iranian citizens trying to overcome the regime's access restrictions. I hope that in the future they can accurately separate real users who are drawing attention to important human rights issues, from the Iranian, Chinese or Russian (and probably a lot of other countries) actors who are abusing the right of free speech and circulating disinformation.
