Sohan Dsouza
Sohan Dsouza is working on ways to solve discovery, veracity, and mobilization problems using a combination of technology and social science. His research background includes crowdsourcing, strategic cooperation, incentive mechanisms, social mobilization, AI ethics, and computer-mediated negotiation. He is interested in the intersection between disinformation and political polarization, and in AI-powered deception, and their implications for platform design and policy. He is a trained and experienced practitioner of open-source intelligence (OSINT) for exposing manipulation online.
Sohan brings years of experience in industry as a software engineer, along with years of experience in academia as a research engineer and a research assistant, primarily in computational social science. His formal education spans Computer Information Systems (BS), IT Management (MBA/PGDM), Informatics (MSc), and Media Arts and Sciences (SM).
Sohan's work has been published in Nature, PNAS, Transport, and IEEE intelligent Systems, and has been covered by major media outlets including the New York Times, BBC, NPR, Guardian, New Scientist, Scientific American, and Associated Press.
Phone: +44(74)5937-4886
Sohan brings years of experience in industry as a software engineer, along with years of experience in academia as a research engineer and a research assistant, primarily in computational social science. His formal education spans Computer Information Systems (BS), IT Management (MBA/PGDM), Informatics (MSc), and Media Arts and Sciences (SM).
Sohan's work has been published in Nature, PNAS, Transport, and IEEE intelligent Systems, and has been covered by major media outlets including the New York Times, BBC, NPR, Guardian, New Scientist, Scientific American, and Associated Press.
Phone: +44(74)5937-4886
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Reports, Investigations & Methods by Sohan Dsouza
spreads xenophobic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Qatar propaganda and disinformation, with the
rest cloaked in language of compassion and secularism.
● Some of the content is specific, asking users to divest or boycott Qatar-owned institutions
like Paris Saint-Germain F.C. or Harrods, or applauding Texas A&M University’s recent
decision to shut down its Qatar campus.
● The operation is active on Facebook, Twitter/X, Wikimedia (mainly Wikipedia and Wikidata),
YouTube, Telegram, and TikTok online; and has made offline appearances on billboards and
at the CPAC conference. It has deployed dozens of videos and images across platforms,
across different levels of quality, with many clearly AI-generated.
● It has spread its narratives online using at least 978 Facebook ads, hosted on at least 25
Facebook Pages, supported by a network of at least 44 “burner” Pages, some of which were
clearly stolen; using several overt, branded Twitter accounts, supported by more covert
advertising/booster accounts, and likely paid engagement networks too; and by vandalising
at least 47 Wikimedia properties using 9 accounts often working in coordination.
● The operation has targeted France, the UK, the USA, and Saudi Arabia in the 1st wave
(2024/JAN-MAR); and the UK, Belgium, France, Sweden, Croatia, Malta, and Germany, in the
2nd wave (2024/MAY-JUN, just weeks before EU elections, and in a UK general election year).
● It includes content in Arabic, Spanish, French and English.
● The minimum reach of this operation on Facebook is 41,074,052, with a conservative
projected Facebook advertising spend range of between 100,000 USD - 272,000k USD1 This
means it may have reached up to 61% of the entire population of France, and is likely the
largest known Facebook influence campaign targeting countries in the EU The campaigns on
Twitter also accumulated at least several million impressions/views, and the TikTok video
was viewed over a million times.
● Despite always violating Facebook’s advertising standards or rules, the operation has been
resilient. Most pages taken down mid-attack were observed either restored, or migrated to a
different URL. It seems the network uses infrastructure from and tactics honed in Vietnam’s
content/engagement farming industry and digital asset marketplaces, including techniques
enabling it to repeatedly sneak past platform moderation crews’ procedures for inauthentic
conduct detection, scrutiny, and even takedown.
● The mission of the operation appears to be attacking Qatar and advancing neoconservative
geopolitical interests, stoking and exploiting anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, and
anti-protester sentiment in the process — during an election-heavy year, no less.
● The operation started towards the end of 2023, and has run consistently since.
Papers by Sohan Dsouza