David Agranovich
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dagrano.bsky.social
David Agranovich
@dagrano.bsky.social
Fmr. NSC Director, Intelligence. Director, Threat Disruption @ Meta. Rescue Dog Pilot, Flight Instructor, Former Big Hair Practitioner 🏳️‍🌈
It’s green season in the Bay! And the mustard is flowering in Half Moon Bay. Sometimes when world events have you down it’s good to get above it for a bit.
March 10, 2025 at 2:47 AM
For those unfamiliar with the US intelligence community, this is the Discount Intelligence Agency
obviously never met anyone from DIA
some dude posting about how “there’s no way that congressional intel committee staffers could be insane because they have security clearances” is the most telling-on-yourself thing i’ve seen since this platform launched.
January 10, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by David Agranovich
In this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out on TaiwanPlus, The Citizen Lab’s senior researcher Rebekah Brown talks about the commercial spyware industry, its misuse by governments, and the urgent need for regulation.
#spyware
Watch it here: www.taiwanplus.com/news/shows/z...
Combating Global Abuse of Commercial Spyware
The Biden administration this year launched an initiative to combat the global abuses of commercial spyware. What exactly is commercial spyware and how pervasive is its use? On this episode of Zoom...
www.taiwanplus.com
December 19, 2024 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by David Agranovich
Wrote a piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on some of the lessons that Meta’s Q3 threat report brings back to the surface in online IO:

1. Tension between virality & opsec
2. Experimentation is ongoing
3. Variation in defenses creates arbitrage dynamics
4. Line btwn overt & covert is blurry
December 17, 2024 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by David Agranovich
To quote @hayesbrown.bsky.social, "this is going to be [is already] the dumbest dystopia
December 17, 2024 at 6:18 PM
DRONE THREAD (I’m sorry)

Context: I used to be a commercial drone operator in DC before becoming a real airplane pilot. I’ve seen a lot of people confused about this “drone” story. Some important things to understand:
December 15, 2024 at 5:38 AM
As the holiday season approaches, we’re taking steps to disrupt scammers operating across the internet, including on Meta platforms, and partnering with researchers and experts to raise awareness about scams - read more below! /1
How to Avoid Scams Online This Holiday Season | Meta
We’re launching a global anti-scam awareness campaign in collaboration with researchers and safety experts to help people avoid scams this holiday season.
about.fb.com
December 11, 2024 at 12:40 AM
"The Haw Tuah Memecoin Rug Pull Is The Apotheosis of Bag Culture..."

You bolt awake in the mountains of Carthage. You are not online. It is 217 BC. You are the general Hannibal, and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Rome must burn.
December 10, 2024 at 10:17 PM
Interestingly, Sichuan Silence LTD was also the subject of our info ops threat report in 2021: about.fb.com/news/2021/12...
December 10, 2024 at 5:42 PM
We've just released our Q3 Adversarial Threat Report. Being part of the team creating the threat disruption discipline has been the high point of my last 6 years at Meta. The report covers influence operations and adversarial ops we've detected and disrupted in the last quarter. Some key takeaways:
transparency.fb.com
December 3, 2024 at 8:56 PM
Reposted by David Agranovich
NEW REPORT: We investigate the rising trend of gender-based digital transnational repression by drawing on the lived experiences of 85 women human rights defenders living in exile across the globe.
Read the full report: citizenlab.ca/2024/12/the-...
No Escape: The Weaponization of Gender for the Purposes of Digital Transnational Repression - The Citizen Lab
Building upon our prior research and the contributions of other scholars to this field, the aim of this novel study is to understand the security risks and harms caused by digital transnational repres...
citizenlab.ca
December 2, 2024 at 1:14 PM
All these takes debating whether we need to stay on X to “break through” or whatever and my top of feed there is a graphic of prominent women in history with Stars of David overlaid on their faces claiming “feminism is a tool of Jews to undermine the Christian Man”

I think we will be ok without X
December 2, 2024 at 2:52 PM
Ever wondered what more than 1000mph of closure looks like? Southwest Airlines passing 1000 feet below from a Cirrus Vision Jet going the other direction
December 1, 2024 at 10:14 PM
Looking down the Pacific coast on a chilly Fall morning
November 30, 2024 at 8:50 PM
While it’s a tale as old as time to see platforms speed run these hard tradeoffs, I really respect the Bluesky team for talking transparently *about* those tradeoffs. While this is an adversarial space, this kind of transparency goes a long way in building trust.
1/ We're experiencing a huge influx of users, and with that, a predictable uptick in harmful content posted to the network.

As a result, for some very high-severity policy areas like child safety, we recently made some short-term moderation choices to prioritize recall over precision.
November 26, 2024 at 3:59 AM
Oh hey San Francisco
November 16, 2024 at 8:11 PM
Good group to follow!
November 12, 2024 at 6:57 PM
> everyone posts solidarity weasels
> inadvertently DDoSes the app again
We must not let the anti-weasel DDoSers win. Everybody post solidarity weasels
July 7, 2023 at 4:44 PM
Looking at the implementation on profiles, seems there’s space for a future domain host
July 5, 2023 at 11:41 PM
Some photos of Yevgeny Prigozhin appeared today today, some notable stuff, besides how dumb he looks. First, this one. Most notable is the insignia on his hat, which appears to be for the Libyan Armed Forces, and is consistent with the uniform he’s wearing. Why Libya? 1/x
July 5, 2023 at 10:51 PM
The brilliant and occasionally grumpy @shanehuntley.bsky.social is here, go follow him because he gazes into the cyber abyss and brings forth arcane knowledge
July 5, 2023 at 4:59 AM
@gavinwilde.bsky.social worth reading today. Those (particularly in Western Europe) who point to the popularity of Russian media in LatAm and Africa shouod perhaps introspect on history.
the man @gavinwilde.bsky.social dropping fire:

“Blaming Russian propaganda for the southern hemisphere’s relative ambivalence toward the war is colonialism by any other name.“

https://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/en/russian-propaganda-in-the-southern-hemisphere-a-simplistic-scapegoat/
www.atlantik-bruecke.org
June 29, 2023 at 7:09 PM
June 24, 2023 at 1:20 AM
If Russia-watchers search their deepest selves, the situation in Rostov feels like the most predictable outcome of the last 6 years. Russia invades Russia while Russian state media decries news about Prigozhin, noted troll farm operator, as misinformation.
Lol. Lmao even.
June 24, 2023 at 1:08 AM