Twitter released a dataset containing a network of 4,248 accounts ‘operating uniquely’ from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The network probably sought to influence audiences across the world by tweeting in multiple languages, including English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian and Japanese. Some of the accounts in the Twitter dataset used fake personas and tweeted about regional issues. such as the Yemen civil war and the Houthi movement. The UAE has a history of hacking Qatari news and social media accounts and allegedly deploying social media bots to criticise the Qatari Government and royal family. In 2017, Twitter bots were allegedly used during the Gulf crisis primarily to increase negative information and propaganda from blockading countries, including the UAE, towards Qatar. According to Marc Owen Jones’ analysis of the dataset attributed by Twitter, accounts in the network posted more than 1 million tweets and retweets by both human trolls and possibly automated accounts. Those accounts promoted UAE foreign policy by demonising Qatar, the Houthis and Iran, and supported the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Twitter has also removed a network of 271 accounts that were attributed to DotDev, a private technology company operating in the UAE and Egypt but most likely run out of Egypt (see the Egypt country summary for more details). Accounts in an April 2020 dataset associated with Saudi Arabia were also operating from the UAE (see the Saudi Arabia country summary for more details).