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Again. "Fake Facebook account helped *create* immigrant caravan" at election time
Facebook is a malign force when exploited by the powerful, and Facebook appears not to care that they are harming societies.
Summary of this article from TPM:
A fake Facebook account helped create the caravan; it motivated Hondurans to march to the US exactly at the time it would most help Republicans and Trump.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/fake-facebook-account-had-role-building-immigrant-caravan
Here’s a very, very interesting Buzzfeed article which reports that a fake Facebook account appears to have had an important role stirring up the Honduran immigrant caravan which coincided almost precisely with the 2018 midterm election. Facebook has admitted the account was an imposter account impersonating a prominent Honduran politician. But it is refusing to release information about the account, who may have set it up or what country it originated from.
...
During the height of the news fever back in October I reached out to a prominent US pro-immigration activist and asked this person, ‘Am I crazy to be suspicious that you’ve got the biggest caravan yet heading north timed almost perfectly for the final weeks of the US election?’ The answer was very interesting. It was basically, ‘Yeah, we’re all very suspicious but there’s no clear evidence that it hasn’t grown up organically.’
...
It appears that this account helped the caravan gain key momentum to the point where its size became a self-fulfilling prophecy, spurring even more to join and groups which hadn’t been supportive to get involved.
So far, it seems like we only know about this single account. It’s hard to believe one Facebook account could play that decisive a role. But the account seems to have been sophisticated. And it is equally difficult to believe that a sophisticator operator or organization would have gone to such trouble and limited their efforts to a single imposter account.
The forces leading people to risk everything to leave Honduras are real and not going anywhere. But the timing of that caravan has always strained credulity. This requires a lot more scrutiny.
...
During the height of the news fever back in October I reached out to a prominent US pro-immigration activist and asked this person, ‘Am I crazy to be suspicious that you’ve got the biggest caravan yet heading north timed almost perfectly for the final weeks of the US election?’ The answer was very interesting. It was basically, ‘Yeah, we’re all very suspicious but there’s no clear evidence that it hasn’t grown up organically.’
...
It appears that this account helped the caravan gain key momentum to the point where its size became a self-fulfilling prophecy, spurring even more to join and groups which hadn’t been supportive to get involved.
So far, it seems like we only know about this single account. It’s hard to believe one Facebook account could play that decisive a role. But the account seems to have been sophisticated. And it is equally difficult to believe that a sophisticator operator or organization would have gone to such trouble and limited their efforts to a single imposter account.
The forces leading people to risk everything to leave Honduras are real and not going anywhere. But the timing of that caravan has always strained credulity. This requires a lot more scrutiny.
11 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
We know when we've been rat-fucked, we just don't know if it's Russians or Repukes, or a combination. I guess the pertinent question is, why is Facebook playing along?
