Election Interference in Latin America: A Growing Danger
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
BRETT HEINZ
Many people in the US first became aware of the problem of election interference on social media when allegations emerged of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US elections through the dissemination of “fake news” on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. But as we learn more about the phenomenon, it is becoming increasingly clear that dishonest social media campaigns are a global issue, and that many private and government actors are now routinely using disinformation campaigns to influence elections. Indeed, in Latin America, such tactics have already become a go-to strategy for many right-wing movements and governments.
Earlier this month, Buzzfeed reported on a memo written by a Facebook data scientist-turned-whistleblower that provides new details on Facebook’s haphazard approach towards identifying manipulative political campaigns on their platform. The whistleblower, Sophie Zhang, noted that when Facebook did enforce its rules, it focused on “harm and priority regions like the United States and Western Europe” where political interference campaigns were most likely to spark public issues for the company. When these campaigns were spotted in smaller countries with less Western news coverage, Facebook “simply didn’t care enough to stop them.” One manager at Facebook joked to Zhang that “most of the world outside the West was effectively the Wild West with [her] as the part-time dictator.”
Zhang’s memo also points to a number of concrete examples of political manipulation campaigns from around the world, including particularly salient examples from Latin America. During Brazil’s 2018 election, millions of “fake reactions and fans” supporting “major politicians of all persuasions” were taken down. Following the disqualification of popular former President Lula de Silva due to dubious and politically-driven corruption charges, far-right nationalist Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. His victory was aided by a large-scale fake news operation which sent out hundreds of millions of WhatsApp messages to Brazilian voters. Pro-Bolsonaro businessmen illegally funded the operation to the tune of over $3 million USD. Thus, even in an instance where Facebook did take action, campaigns still continued elsewhere.
In Honduras, the marketing team for conservative President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) “openly admitted” to operating hundreds of fake accounts supportive of him. Despite this, it took Zhang over a year to have the profiles removed, only for them to reemerge “within two weeks”; she adds that “the activity is still live and well.” JOH won Honduras’ 2017 elections by a narrow margin, but widespread allegations of electoral fraud led to protests which were met by state violence that resulted in dozens of killings, as well as a ten-day national curfew. In the brief period following this election, research found that a majority of Tweets which tagged JOH were sent from TweetDeck, a type of software used to send Tweets automatically. Despite domestic and international calls for a new election due to the statistical impossibility of the results and clear evidence of manipulation, the US government recognized JOH – a Trump ally – as Honduras’ legitimate leader and pressured other conservative allies in the region to follow suit. He has since been implicated by US prosecutors in drug trafficking activities.
More:
https://cepr.net/election-interference-in-latin-america-a-growing-danger/?fbclid=IwAR0_v7mLk4pJmg3v4Te_DOIXzihho5AJ548TdH3aJfODZZceINnqm8gtePw
