Hello from the Other Side: An Investigation into a Musical Pro-Muslim Brotherhood Disinformation Operation

On November 5, 2020, Facebook announced the takedown of 25 Pages, 31 profiles, and two Instagram accounts affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Facebook, the operation originated in Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco. The network targeted audiences both in Egypt directly and across the Middle East, North Africa, and East Africa. Facebook shared this network with the Stanford Internet Observatory on October 24, 2020.
Many social media disinformation campaigns–and associated takedowns–have been linked to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt. But we believe this is the first takedown linked to opposing pro-Muslim Brotherhood actors. Interestingly, this network appears markedly similar to networks from anti-Muslim Brotherhood disinformation campaigns on Facebook. Both sides create professional branding for Pages, share polished, custom videos, and in this case even released original songs. We conjecture that like anti-Muslim Brotherhood operations, this network may be linked to a digital marketing firm in Egypt. These firms have a particular signature. Facebook suspended this Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated network not due to the content of its posts, but for coordinated inauthentic behavior: The Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts were managed by fake accounts.