MKO Terrorist Group’s Twitter Bots in Albania Try to Manipulate Online Debates on Iran (+Video)

According to a recent al Jazeera report, the MKO terrorist organization has used fake Twitter accounts in order to start a wave of propaganda, by promoting fake news to change Iranian opinion against the government and push the country towards a regime change.

Last month, Google, Facebook and Twitter announced the shutdown of pages and accounts they say were linked to Iran.

While the effectiveness of Iran's online disinformation networks is far from established, the Islamic Republic has now joined Russia in the popular consciousness as another government using the internet to destabilize its adversaries.

Meanwhile, a widespread campaign of social media manipulation by actors who are opposed to the government in Tehran has had many analysts eyeing Iran's enemies for clues to who might be behind the project.

"The turning point was really [Donald] Trump's election," says journalist and New America fellow Azadeh Moaveni. "Once it became clear that there would be heightened hostility with Iran, there was a profusion of new accounts, anonymous accounts who were single-mindedly and purposefully going after people who wrote about, talked about Iran with nuance."

While Twitter did not respond directly to questions about the methodology it used to detect organized manipulation of its platform, lecturer in Middle East history at Exeter University, Marc Owen Jones, shared with us how he uses freely available Twitter metadata to detect the presence of bots.

"If you want to use bots to be effective you need a lot of accounts, which means you might create a lot of accounts on a specific day or week or month," explains Jones. "The majority of the accounts tweeting on the #FreeIran and #Iran_Regime_Change hashtag from late December up to May, were created within about a four-month window. What that would suggest is that a lot of the activity on those hashtags came from bots."

Most of the accounts identified had only a few dozen or a few hundred followers and used generic profile pictures. The vast majority tweet almost exclusively in opposition to the Islamic Republic with many exhibiting sympathies with the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK or MKO).

In relevant development, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday criticized a recent move by Twitter to shut down accounts belonging to Iranian nationals, including TV presenters and students, as it ignores accounts used for Washington’s regime change policy against Tehran.

“Hello @Jack. Twitter has shuttered accounts of real Iranians, incl TV presenters & students, for supposedly being part of an 'influence op',” Zarif said on his Twitter account on Sunday, addressing Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey.

“How about looking at actual bots in Tirana used to prop up 'regime change' propaganda spewed out of DC? #YouAreBots,” Zarif added in his tweet.