Africa-based trolls behind disinformation scheme fuelling UK race riots
An ABC investigation has uncovered a Facebook disinformation operation that targeted recent riots in the UK, run by internet trolls operating from Africa.
Transcript
00:00We discovered a Facebook page called Patriots of Britain.
00:04Now this page launched in late July and it was posting anti-immigrant misinformation
00:09targeting the UK race riots.
00:12Now the page itself claimed to be based in the UK but it turns out it was actually managed
00:16out of Africa.
00:17So we used the META-owned media transparency tool CrowdTangle.
00:21Now CrowdTangle is a tool that's used by researchers and journalists to investigate META's social
00:27media platforms.
00:28So we're talking about Facebook and Instagram.
00:31In response to what we found, META shut down the page due to inauthentic behaviour.
00:36However the tool that we used, CrowdTangle, is also being shut down by META this week.
00:41So what does that closure of CrowdTangle mean for misinformation and disinformation then?
00:47Well we've seen misinformation play a big role in this latest unrest in the UK.
00:52In terms of this page, the impact was probably quite small.
00:55However it's not the first time we've used that tool, CrowdTangle, to detect something
00:58like this.
01:00Disinformation researchers we spoke to are concerned about the closure of the tool and
01:03what that will mean for detecting and investigating falsehoods online.
01:08And Australia's East Safety Commissioner is concerned too about the closure of the tool.
01:11And its closure comes ahead of the US November presidential election as well as the next
01:15federal election in Australia.