Analysis of Twitter Takedown of State-Backed Operation Attributed to Saudi Arabian Digital Marketing Firm Smaat

On December 20, 2019 Twitter announced the removal of 88,000 accounts managed by Smaat, a digital marketing company based in Saudi Arabia, and attributed thousands of these accounts to involvement in “a significant state-backed information operation”. Twitter noted that “Smaat appears to have created, purchased, and/or managed these accounts on behalf of – but not necessarily with the knowledge of – their clients. [...] Smaat managed a range of Twitter accounts for high-profile individuals, as well as many government departments in Saudi
Arabia.” Smaat had commercial clients as well.

Smaat had both political and commercial clients. While the accounts’ tweets were consistent with the objectives of these clients, the accounts
also tweeted uncontroversial content about Islam, the weather, and poetry. This at first made it difficult for our team – and presumably ordinary citizens as well – to assess the nature of these accounts. Upon further investigation into the dataset, we observed tweets criticizing Qatar’s government, tweets criticizing Jamal Khashoggi, and tweets defending the Crown Prince against accusations
that he was involved in Khashoggi’s murder. We also observed Smaat accounts participating in engagement rings to increase their follower and engagement counts.