On February 29, 2020, Facebook removed a network of assets engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting audiences in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). These assets were linked to two marketing firms, NewWaves and Flexell, that were at the center of two separate purges in August and October 2019, respectively.

In its announcement, Facebook said:

We also removed 333 Facebook accounts, 195 Pages, 9 Groups and 1194 Instagram accounts that were involved in foreign interference emanating from Egypt that focused on countries across the Middle East and North Africa. […] Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to two marketing firms in Egypt — NewWaves and Flexell. Both these companies and individuals associated with them have repeatedly violated our Inauthentic Behavior policy and are now banned from Facebook.

The DFRLab corroborated the link to NewWaves but was unable to corroborate any direct connection to Flexell.

Facebook provided the DFRLab a subset of these assets consisting of seven Facebook groups, 73 Facebook pages, and 1,191 Instagram accounts ahead of the takedown and was able to corroborate the company’s assessment of inauthentic and coordinated activities between these assets before they were removed by Facebook.

The assets bear familiar hallmarks reminiscent of previous campaigns orchestrated by marketing companies NewWaves and the similarly named Newave, registered in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. In August 2019, the DFRLab published an investigation into the network shortly after Facebook removed those assets.

The investigation found evidence that the network’s Facebook and Instagram assets coordinated their activity and that a related set of Twitter accounts appeared to be a part of the same campaign. The existence of a Twitter network operating in unison with assets on Facebook is also reminiscent of a BuzzFeed investigation into Flexell’s operations published in October 2019. The network repurposed the same memes and images, even across platforms, sometimes performing minor alterations or translations to suit a different audience.

The Instagram and Facebook assets interspersed uplifting and humorous content with politically charged narratives, presumably to garner a wide following before pivoting into regional politics. These assets targeted countries in the MENA region, including Turkey, Iran, Qatar, Bahrain, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya among others, with Facebook adverts meant to promote the network. Despite being targeted at these countries, the administrators for these pages were mostly based in Egypt.