Alberto Fittarelli
Sr. Researcher @citizenlab.ca, Disinformation & Harassment. Fmr. Meta. Trainer: find & expose covert influence. I like doers. Opinions my own.
- Every now and then we should pause and wonder: was the internet supposed to be this? Do I really need *this* internet in my life?
- Across Instagram and Facebook, AI-generated videos show people of color putting ICE agents in their place. Are they cathartic or just adding to a stew of misinformation? www.wired.com/story/anti-i...
- I’m not often in agreement with a Pope, and yet I can’t say this is inaccurate.
- We also happen to know this about Homan: abcnews.go.com/Politics/doj...
- I truly wonder if the many decent, honest people serving in any capacity under this draft-dodging coward realize how his vileness reflects on them in the eyes of the many countries who gave lives, limbs, blood, and suffering fighting along and for them. And when they’ll make their voice be heard.
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliPM Carney 🇨🇦gave a courageous speech with a lot of real-talk about the "rupture" in the international order. But he left something out: the values that define us as a country & distinguish us from the fascist train wreck in the US 🇺🇸 My oped w Jason Stanley www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliNEW 🚨 @citizenlab.ca report: Cellebrite forensic data extraction tool used against Jordanian civil society citizenlab.ca/research/fro...
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliCitizen Lab sr. researcher @fittarelli.com speaks with the @tbij.bsky.social about ‘wikilaundering’ by bad actors intending to spread #disinformation. Read the article: www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
- I struggled for a while with the meaning of “less-lethal”, then realized it’s the same hypocrisy as “alt right”.
- Our PRISONBREAK report @citizenlab.ca is cited in this new NYT story on the manipulation of narratives surrounding the Iranian protests.
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliWikipedia was created 25 years ago, today – since then it’s become the largest collection of relatively reliable knowledge in history But how vulnerable is it to those willing to pay top dollar to polish their reputations? And how do British PR firms help them do it?
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliIf you want to know about the future of AI, take a look at the kaleidoscope of disinfo and psychological operations underway in Iran 🇮🇷 This excellent piece by @mahsaalimardani.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com is a great start www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
- True leadership - right here.
- Great investigation by Claire Wilmot at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism on Portland, a firm specializing in “reputation management”… by hiding negative stories through surreptitious editing of Wikipedia articles. Glad to have contributed with a couple of quotes on this one.
- Let me be *really* clear. Confirmation bias is NOT believing your eyes when you have multiple clear data sources *all* confirming what they see. Check the bodycam footage. Check the NYT multi-angle reconstruction, and the witnesses statements. This was plain murder.
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliThe Trump regime's withdrawal from international "cyber" orgs will weaken cybersecurity coordination and help spread authoritarianism. [precisely what they probably want to happen] My comments to @timstarks.bsky.social @cyberscoop.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/trump-pulls-...
- “It is about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want.”
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliNeat idea for sure, but too bad about the censorship on the backend b/c it uses China's 🇨🇳 DeepSeek
- 1/ Russian disinfo sponsors can’t believe their luck at the chaos spurred by their American counterparts. Not only politicians, but their tech enablers too, of course. Meet “Budjetti”. “She” is on X, of course. Openly antisemitic, racist, anti-Ukraine. And completely unchallenged.
- 2/ Of course, she mainly posts articles from the “Pravda Network” (aka Portal Kombat, that we all know by now to be a Russian network. Check the great Viginum reports on it.) “Her” niche is Finland, so here’s the Finnish website.
- 3/ “She” is gloating about the US threats to Greenland and Denmark, naturally. And doesn’t forget to link them to Denmark’s integrity in supporting Ukraine.
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View full thread8/ My conclusion is bleak. There’s little “social” left in “social media” - at least the prevalent ones. Would you have joined 8chan? No? Then, if you’re still on X or other social media taken over by these networks, you’ll want out. Don’t be the frog that’s being slowly boiled alive.
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliBloomberg's X account has more than 800k followers. Their most recent post was shared five times It would basically come at close to zero cost for outlets like Bloomberg to delete their X accounts, and "We don't want to use a non-consensual deepfake abuse app as a comms platform" is a fine excuse
- Nazis don’t know decency.
- Reposted by Alberto Fittarelli[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliMIT Technology Review profiles @rondeibert.bsky.social, who understood that civil society needed digital defense long before just about anyone else and has been doing it ever since. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/24/1...
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliI’ll just note that the US didn’t do this to China, which outright bans US social media websites
- US bars former EU commissioner Breton and others over tech rules ft.trib.al/TgoG45B
- Reposted by Alberto Fittarelli[Not loaded yet]
- “Report on that fact”. That’s all that needs to be said.
- "I think it’s really important that Wikipedia remain neutral and that we refrain from saying things that are controversial in wiki voice." Read our full interview with Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales: www.theverge.com/tech/846184/...
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliJust to be clear: if 'no one was ready' a lot of people fucked up, bc those of us who work on this laid out what was going to happen 8yrs ago. The twofold issue that 1)it's not just a tech problem, and 2) Big Tech allowed itself to be ref-worked into spinelessness. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/t...
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliOpenAI's Sora 2 ultrarealistic (but fake) AI videos used by Russian disinformation operations, who could have predicted it?!? www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-...
- Get off X. If you’re there for the audience, you’re just damaging your own optics.
- 1/ Yesterday’s Q2-Q3 Adversarial Threat Report by Meta was interesting in many ways. For us @citizenlab.ca, it was a blast from the past. For the first time, Meta’s investigators attributed what in 2019 we had named Endless Mayfly - a relentless, sophisticated influence op targeting Iran’s enemies.
- 2/ Meta notes: “Our investigation has compiled multiple, corroborating lines of evidence […] that attribute this multi-year operation to Iran’s International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM), a sanctioned propaganda group with close links to the Iranian government.”
- 3/ Meta’s attribution tied Endless Mayfly to a broader set of campaigns that the company has disrupted on its platforms repeatedly over the years.
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View full thread9/ The “Burned After Reading” authors: @gabriellelim.bsky.social , @tek.randhome.io , @jsrailton.bsky.social , @rondeibert.bsky.social , Ned Moran, and yours truly.
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliIn 2019, we @citizenlab.ca published an investigation into a disinfo / influence operation we called "Endless Mayfly", and which we attributed at the time to an "Iran-aligned entity" citizenlab.ca/2019/05/burn... Now, Meta's latest adversarial threat report showing we were spot on 👇
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliWe condemn the ongoing targeting of exiled #HongKong activist #CarmenLau, who has faced persistent transnational repression since fleeing her home four years ago. Most recently, her neighbours were sent fake, sexually explicit images of her: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
- Textbook transnational repression targeting @carmenlau.bsky.social and once again, belittling *women* who bravely stand up to autocracy.
- Can disinformation become sabotage? Yes. I posted about the Syrian Electronic Army yesterday: remember when they crashed the Dow Jones with a single tweet in 2013? Disrupting financial markets and rail infrastructure doesn’t differ in principle. Unrestrained AI use makes it only much easier now.
- Here’s a trip down memory lane:
- There goes “Th3 Pr0”, lead in one of the earliest online influence ops to catch the attention of the “West”. “Ahmad Al Agha, one of the purported leaders of the hacker group, Syrian Electronic Army, appeared in federal court last month after being pursued by the law enforcement for eleven years.”
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliIt is good to see enforcement of the EU Digital Services Act against X. We need more principled democratic governance of tech platforms, and penalties for non-compliance 1) Elon Musk’s X Hit With $140 Million Fine in Europe www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/t...
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliWhile "peace" negotiations continue, remember that Russia could simply stop the war at any time.
- Press friends, please. Whenever you see a new report on [hundreds of] false news websites run by [foe], before typing that headline, ask: what’s their impact? I.e.: did they fail at attracting anyone like #PAPERWALL, for example? Make it clear. Their first goal may be to be amplified by *you*.
- Driving traffic to websites is hard, especially if I cannot touch social media without being caught. So what if I rather get press to drive people to me instead? Now I’m a successful evil villain!
- Reposted by Alberto Fittarelli#TaiPo fire: Took 4 days to arrive here: Man arrested for sedition. HKFP understands is the student who made "4 demands" of the authorities: hongkongfp.com/2025/11/30/h... Beijing warns "anti-China disrupted" they'll face the "full force" of the security law: hongkongfp.com/2025/11/29/b...
- “DARVO (an acronym for "Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender") is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.”
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliEvery single congressional Democrat needs to be out there, right now, insisting that Pete Hegseth resign right now and announcing that he will be held accountable for committing war crimes. If you do not demand accountability here and now, they will only become more emboldened.
- What does this say about the role of disinformation in destroying justice and accountability?
- For example: remember #JUICYJAM? The self-professed “businesswoman” who doxxed Thai protesters with information that only a government could have access to? How likely is it that such an innocent private user is regularly on a Japanese VPN despite using the Thai version of the Android X app?
- Thanks @cyn-k.bsky.social.
- Linking to these reports + threads below to make it easy. Researchers at @citizenlab.ca put so much work into these investigations & can be hard to keep up with each new one. Worth noting yet again that just because someone presents something as new, esp in tech, doesn't mean it is:
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliLinking to these reports + threads below to make it easy. Researchers at @citizenlab.ca put so much work into these investigations & can be hard to keep up with each new one. Worth noting yet again that just because someone presents something as new, esp in tech, doesn't mean it is:
- …as we @citizenlab.ca have shown time and time again. Just check our #PRISONBREAK, #JUICYJAM, #HKLEAKS, Endless Mayfly, and many more reports.
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliThis article's focus on Trump and MAGA is inevitable, I guess, but this new facility is also opening up thousands of "sock puppet" troll accounts run by Rwanda's dictatorial regime to public scrutiny - finally. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
- …as we @citizenlab.ca have shown time and time again. Just check our #PRISONBREAK, #JUICYJAM, #HKLEAKS, Endless Mayfly, and many more reports.
- X’s decision to show where its accounts are based “is, theoretically, a positive step in the direction of transparency”—yet Elon Musk may have instead revealed that the platform is “just a worthless, poisoned hall of mirrors,” @cwarzel.bsky.social argues.
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliI give Catholic bishops a hard time often for all the obvious reasons, but this is beautiful and loving, and I'm deeply grateful to hear it. This can change hearts and save lives.
- Just ask Italian neofascists about their misappropriation of Tolkien’s literature - which was written largely with the horrors of WWI (and was certainly not indifferent to WWII) in mind.
- Musk and others on the far right are obsessed with things like Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons because they see fantasy worlds as reinforcing their own beliefs about immutable hierarchies of race, gender, and by extension morality www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
- It was a pleasure to chat with Negar about PRISONBREAK. Read our report here: citizenlab.ca/2025/10/ai-e...
- Citizen Lab's @fittarelli.com speaks with Negar Mortazavi about Israel-linked influence operations pushing for regime change in Iran. Listen to the episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...
- “Europe faces an existential choice: build genuine technological sovereignty now, or accept governance by platforms whose architects view democracy as an obsolete operating system.”
- Reposted by Alberto FittarelliEveryone is talking about AI. It's obviously having a transformative impact across all sectors of society. So how should the Canadian government approach it? My interview with Yvonne Lau for the @financialpost.com financialpost.com/technology/c...
- This entire keynote by @micahflee.com should be watched, but this excerpt, my friends - oh yes. micahflee.com/practical-de...
- I thought we had agreed a few decades ago that Nazi propaganda was bad?
- If you ever wanted to delve into the AI-generated world of far-right imagination.. now you can. See our CampAIgn Tracker 🇳🇱 here: www.campaigntracker.nl/en/ #tk2025
- This great investigation by @jacksapoch.bsky.social is more evidence of the capability and willingness by the Israeli military to widely use sophisticated manipulations to advance communication objectives. What we showed last week with PRISONBREAK is a piece of a much bigger influence puzzle.
- Imagine if Napster back then said something like “I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first. I just don’t see how that would work.”
- Reposted by Alberto Fittarelli[This post could not be retrieved]
