Comment by rendall

* CLS Strategies, a Washington, D.C. communications firm, was named by Facebook/Meta in 2020 when Meta removed fake accounts and pages tied to operations in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. Meta defines coordinated inauthentic behavior as efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central. PRWeek also reported the takedown as fake accounts and pages managed by CLS. [1] [2]

* Rally Forge, a U.S. marketing firm, was linked by Facebook to a 2020 domestic U.S. operation run on behalf of Turning Point USA, involving fake accounts and coordinated behavior. Axios reported that Facebook removed 200 accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts. [3] [4]

* New Knowledge / Project Birmingham is another ugly example. In the 2017 Alabama Senate race, Democratic-aligned operatives experimented with Russian-style disinformation tactics, including fake or misleading Facebook activity and buying retweets. The effort was reportedly small and probably did not decide the election, but it proves the category exists inside the U.S. political ecosystem. [5] [6]

* There are also U.S.-linked pro-Western covert influence operations. Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed accounts removed by Twitter and Meta for platform manipulation or coordinated inauthentic behavior; later reporting said the Pentagon ordered a review after fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military were taken down. Meta later attributed a campaign targeting the Middle East and Central Asia to people associated with the U.S. military. [7] [8] [9]

* Cambridge Analytica is adjacent but not identical. It had U.S. offices and U.S. political clients, and it was part of the broader “election manipulation for hire” world, but its central scandal was data harvesting, psychographic targeting, and political ad targeting, not necessarily fake-account bot networks in the same narrow sense. [10]

[1] August 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/august-2020-cib-report/

[2] Facebook deletes dozens of fake accounts, pages run by CLS Strategies https://www.prweek.com/article/1693342/facebook-deletes-doze...

[3] October 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/october-2020-cib-report/

[4] Facebook removes inauthentic campaign linked to Turning Point USA https://www.axios.com/2020/10/08/facebook-turning-point-usa-...

[5] Researcher whose firm wrote report on Russian interference used questionable online tactics during Alabama Senate race https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/19/researc...

[6] Project Birmingham (disinformation campaign) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Birmingham_%28disinfor...

[7] Unheard Voice: Evaluating five years of pro-Western covert influence operations https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford...

[8] Meta, Twitter take down accounts pushing pro-U.S. messages https://www.axios.com/2022/08/24/meta-twitter-take-down-acco...

[9] Fewer Bots, More Ads: The Pentagon's Evolving Online Influence Campaigns https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/fewer-bots--more-ads--t...

[10] Cambridge Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica