Harassment and trolling: A Reporters Without Borders (2018) report on online harassment notes that many Egyptian journalists’ social media accounts are increasingly being shut down by “the regime’s online armies”. For example, the Twitter account of BBC Cairo correspondent Waël Hussein was blocked, and fake accounts began to disseminate content under his name. Furthermore, in March 2018, the Facebook page of opposition TV network Watan and a Muslim Brotherhood affiliated page were removed – reported to be a result of government supporters reporting the pages to Facebook for violating their terms of service (Freedom House, 2018). Egyptian authorities are said to have organized “troll armies” that deployed abusive language, threats, harassed people online, and bullied critics—particularly women (Warren, 2018). Aya Nader, who reports on human rights issues for Al-Monitor and Open Democracy, stated that she has to “think twice” before writing a story or conducting an interview, and has considered writing under an alias – “the online electronic armies or trolls have a great role in that, I have been named and shamed [for writing content that’s critical of the government]” (Morgan, 2017). Other trends that have been taking place are “follow and report” activities in which troll accounts target various users by reporting them for content. In an analysis done by Eskander (2019) he shows that during the month of October 2019 up to 150 accounts claimed to have been suspended across just one week. Eskander argues that there seems to be a number of systematic Twitter suspensions, such as Arabic content being marked as ‘hateful conduct’. For example, when reposting an Arabic tweet that got suspended on Twitter in English, the tweet does not get suspended. Amplification of propaganda: Fake accounts are often more popular than legitimate accounts— according to The Arab Weekly, Education Minister Mahmoud Abo el-Nasr’s fake account had 80,000 followers compared to the 55,000 followers on his official page (The Arab Weekly 2018). Coordinated fake accounts appear to amplify both pro- and anti-regime political content. The BBC discovered that while posts by the official Twitter account of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attracted an average of 2,000 to 3,000 likes each, many of these accounts appeared suspicious. For example, their activities appeared only to promote pro-Sisi posts, suggesting coordinated activity to make posts more visible (BBC Monitoring, 2018). In June and July 2018, hashtags such as #El-Sisi_Zaemy_Waftakher (El-Sisi is my leader and I’m proud), as well as opposition hashtags such as #Erhal_Yasisi (Sisi, leave) were posted thousands of times. Both hashtags contained evidence of organic and inorganic activity, with accounts supporting ‘Sisi_leave’ coming from those that also tweet about Palestine and are in support of the Muslim Brotherhood (Kanishkkaran, 2018). Coordinated inauthentic behaviour: During 2019 a number of global coordinated inauthentic networks stemming from Egypt surfaced. These networks mostly targeted audiences in the Middle East and North Africa, and were linked to marketing firms and newspapers based in Egypt. In one case, Facebook removed 333 accounts, 195 ages, 9 groups and 1194 Instagram accounts that were involved in foreign interference created by the Egyptian marketing firm New Waves. The network created fake accounts mostly posturing as females whose messages included the combination of uplifting and humorous content with political content in an attempt to gather a wide following before diving into regional politics. The assets targeted Middle Eastern countries such as Libya, Turkey, Yemen, Somalia, and Lebanon. According to the report, “the assets frequently posted about local news, politics, elections and topics including 124