Throughout 2017, pranksters and extremists utilized parody accounts to discredit the antifascist movement in the US, taking advantage of available and official-sounding Twitter handles and public confusion about antifascists to spread narratives about antifa violence and drive wedges between antifascists, Black Lives Matter activists, and liberals. These butterfly attacks used keyword squatting to capture attention during breaking news events, and tactically adjusted over the course of the year. This case study outlines the origin of butterfly attacks that continue to the present day, with news events like #AntifaFires being a prime recent example of a disinformation campaign made possible by the media manipulation campaign outlined here.
[…]
Source: Butterfly Attack: The Origins of Fake Antifa Social Media Accounts | Media Manipulation Casebook