Facebook has taken out a government-run troll farm in Nicaragua, the place a number of authorities businesses helped run a community of pretend accounts and media pages that spanned throughout Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Facebook shared particulars of the community in its monthly report on coordinated inauthentic habits on the platform.
In addition to lots of of pretend accounts on its platform, the troll farm additionally operated a “a complex network of media brands” on Blogspot, WordPress and Telegram, Facebook mentioned in an announcement. Some pretend accounts posed as authorities supporters, whereas some posed as college college students, who led protests in opposition to the federal government in 2018. The pretend account additionally mass-reported activists and different authorities critics in an try to get them banned from Facebook. Beginning in 2019, the group additionally started “posting and artificially amplifying praise about the Nicaraguan government and the ruling FSLN party.”
While it’s not the primary time Facebook has caught a authorities operating this type of operation, Facebook mentioned the Nicaraguan effort was distinctive as a result of they have been in a position to hyperlink it to a number of authorities establishments, together with the Social Security Institute and Supreme Court. The nation’s publish workplace headquarters Managua served as a “main hub” for the troll farm, and authorities staff even appeared to publish on an everyday 9am-5pm schedule.
“This was really the closest thing we’ve yet seen to a whole-of-government operation,” Facebook’s Global Threat Intelligence Lead for Influence Operations, Ben Nimmo, mentioned throughout a name with reporters. “This is the first time that I can think of [that] we’ve seen so many different institutions getting involved.”
It’s additionally notable that Facebook traced the beginning of the operation again to 2018, that means a lot of the exercise went undetected for years. Nimmo famous that whereas the corporate’s automated techniques have been in a position to detect and disable a number of the pretend accounts in 2018, the operation was “complex” and time-consuming to research.
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