Iran's state broadcaster meddled in Scottish referendum, says Facebook

Iran’s state broadcaster experimented with using fake social media accounts to influence the outcome of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and other western elections, according to a report from Facebook released on Tuesday.

The Iranian network, one of eight to be suspended for so-called “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” by the social media giant in April, points to efforts by state-linked groups to try to use Facebook to influence foreign democratic contests years before Russia’s alleged campaign against the 2016 US presidential contest.

The network was linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Corporation and involved more than 500 accounts that claimed to be independent but amplified narratives favourable to Tehran, according to Graphika, a social network analysis company that was allowed to independently verify Facebook’s findings.

The pages and accounts involved dated back to 2011 and targeted audiences in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. Some had thousands of followers and operated for years while others were quickly deleted without drawing much engagement.

The network’s targets briefly included the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, about which a handful of accounts posted pro-leave content including several cartoons portraying then prime minister David Cameron as “the embodiment of English oppression”, the Graphika report said.

The network also promoted the 2012 US presidential bid by libertarian candidate Ron Paul and the anti-capitalist Occupy movement, but the efforts in all three cases were brief and made little impact.

“The focus on western democratic exercises appears to have been a short-lived experiment conducted with a relatively small number of accounts: it did not have the scale, the sophistication, or the duration of the later Russian efforts,” it said.

Its more sustained campaigns were in Arabic. It published memes and linked to articles that were critical of Iran’s geopolitical foes, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia. More recent content mentioned coronavirus, framing the pandemic as an attack on Iran by a foreign enemy and a reason to lift sanctions on both Iran and Syria.

The influence network was notable less for its success than for its start date, Graphika said, showing that state attempts to meddle in democratic elections were underway years before they became prominent with the efforts of Russian-linked groups to sow division and promote Donald Trump.

Both Facebook and Twitter have identified several Iranian influence operations on their networks and the Islamic Republic is regarded as one of the most persistent actors in the field.