9/24/21, 7:33 PM Facebook shut down commercial disinformation network based in Myanmar and Vietnam | by @DFRLab | DFRLab | Medium A collection of some of the neutral posts seen on Myanmar Internet & Telecom News and Myanmar Telecom Promotions. The posts on the left were media articles, and the post on the right amplified a MyTel competitor. The post in the center presented as a neutral comparison but favored MyTel substantially. (Source: Facebook) Over time, the six pages accumulated slightly more than 290,000 page likes. A CrowdTangle analysis of the pages in the network indicated that four of the pages showed suspicious increases in the number of page likes when plotted over time. “Page likes” refers to a measure of the popularity of the page and is a direct reflection of the number of users that opt-in to receive posts from the page on their timeline. A CrowdTangle analysis of the Page Likes over time for assets in this network. Note the congruent increases in Page Likes (dark blue, blue, and green) as well as the sudden plateaus. (Source: @jean_leroux/DFRLab via CrowdTangle) The uptick in page likes occurred around the same time as an uptick in page interactions, a cumulative term for likes, shares, and comments on posts the page authored. Furthermore, these interactions ceased just as rapidly as they commenced. In the incidents highlighted in dark blue and green in the image above, the page likes continued to increase for days, after page interactions had ceased, but abruptly https://medium.com/dfrlab/facebook-shut-down-commercial-disinformation-network-based-in-myanmar-and-vietnam-d8c07c518c04 6/15