“Facebook took down a network of more than 100 pages and accounts on Wednesday it said was affiliated with convicted felon and former Republican operative Roger Stone for ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ dating back to around the 2016 election and its aftermath,” the Washington Post reports.

“Facebook officials said Stone, a longtime friend of President Trump and adviser to his first presidential campaign, used fake accounts and other deceptive measures to manipulate public debate. He also, in at least a small number of occasions, drew attention to posts made by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.”

“For weeks, a mysterious figure on social media talked up plans for antifa protesters to converge on this historical site on Independence Day to burn American flags, an event that seemed at times to border on the farcical,” the Washington Post reports.

“As word spread, self-proclaimed militias, bikers, skinheads and far-right groups from outside the state issued a call to action, pledging in online videos and posts to come to Gettysburg to protect the Civil War monuments and the nation’s flag from desecration. Some said they would bring firearms and use force if necessary.”

“On Saturday afternoon, in the hours before the flag burning was to start, they flooded in by the hundreds — heavily armed and unaware, it seemed, that the mysterious Internet poster was not who the person claimed to be.”

“At a time when trustworthy journalism is more important than ever, political operations are pouring millions of ‘dark money‘ dollars into ads and digital content masquerading as news coverage to influence the 2020 election,” Open Secrets reports.

Page Six: “The ransom demand for the secret files of a cyber-attacked lawyer to A-list stars has doubled to $42 million — as the hackers now threaten to reveal ‘dirty laundry’ on President Trump in just a week if they are not paid in full.”

“Hacking group REvil got into his firm’s server and stole 756 gigabytes of confidential documents, including contracts and personal emails from a host of Hollywood and music stars. They also deleted or encrypted the firm’s backups. The only way they can be decrypted is to pay the criminals for a key.”

The Republican National Committee is sending documents labeled “2020 Congressional District Census” to people in California and across the country just weeks before the start of the official nationwide count of the country’s population, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Critics say the misleading mailers — in envelopes labeled “Do Not Destroy. Official Document” and including a lengthy questionnaire on blue-tinted paper similar to the type used by the real census — are designed to confuse people and possibly lower the response rate when the count begins in mid-March.

The RNC paid to generate thousands of calls to the congressional offices of nearly three dozen House Democrats in recent weeks, an effort that was aimed at both shaping opinion around the impeachment inquiry and tying up the phone lines of the elected officials, the New York Times reports.

New York Times: “All the site says about its creator is buried in the fine print at the bottom of the page. The site, it says, is a political parody built and paid for ‘BY AN American citizen FOR American citizens,’ and not the work of any campaign or political action committee.”

“There is indeed an American behind the website — that much is unambiguously true. But he is very much a political player, and a Republican one at that. His name is Patrick Mauldin, and he makes videos and other digital content for President’s Trump’s re-election campaign. Together with his brother Ryan, Mr. Mauldin also runs Vici Media Group, a Republican political consulting firm in Austin whose website opens with the line ‘We Kick’ followed by the image of a donkey — the Democratic Party symbol often known by another, three-letter, name.”

The Washington Post profiles GOP operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, who see their mission as smearing critics of the president.

“As it turns out, the truth or falsity of a Burkman-Wohl-concocted story is merely an inconvenience. Let the media’s ‘puritanical’ fact-checkers puzzle it out: That’s the view of this twosome who fancy themselves as sub rosa players in the 2020 presidential contest and busy themselves trafficking in Internet rumors they hope will damage Democratic candidates. Like notorious dirty tricksters before them, they operate in a realm where it matters little whether their claims are proved — they hardly ever are — but only whether they somehow slip into a corpuscle or two of the national bloodstream.”

“But today it’s a more dangerous game: They operate in an era when notions about truth and fiction have been upended and in which many Americans get their information from self-affirming, partisan silos, making their brand of political cyberwarfare hyper-relevant.”

CBS News: “Russian Twitter trolls have attempted to fuel the anti-vaccination debate in the U.S., posting about the issue far more than the average Twitter user last year, a study out of George Washington University has found.”

“The ‘sophisticated’ bots shared opinions from both sides of the anti-vaxxer debate, which took the U.S. by storm and prompted tech companies to crack down on the spread of misinformation surrounding vaccinations.”