On March 11, 2020 Twitter shared with the Stanford Internet Observatory accounts and tweets associated with five distinct takedowns. These include:
- Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt: 5,350 accounts and 36,523,977 tweets. The removed accounts were linked both to a September 2019 takedown of accounts linked to DotDev, a digital marketing firm operating out of Egypt and the UAE, and a December 2019 takedown attributed to Smaat, a Saudi Arabian digital marketing firm. This takedown was a result of a tip the Stanford Internet Observatory shared with Twitter in December 2019.
- Facebook also shared with the Internet Observatory 55 Pages that are linked to this operation; these Pages were run out of Egypt. Facebook attributes these Pages to Maat, a social media marketing firm.
- Egypt (El Fagr newspaper): 2,541 accounts and 7,935,267 tweets. A takedown of accounts tied to the El Fagr newspaper, an Egyptian weekly tabloid. The removed accounts were linked to an October 2019 takedown of El Fagr’s activities by Facebook.
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