Tag: fake accounts

activist exposing fake accounts on social media arrested, facing up to 12 years behind bars [with updates]

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Razi Alishov was detained on May 28 in the city of Ganja. Two days later, the political activist and member of the opposition Popular Front party, was charged with Article 234.2 of the Criminal Code [Illegal purchase or storage with a view of selling, manufacturing, processing, transportation, transfer or selling of narcotics or psychotropic substances] and sentenced to two months in pretrial detention. 

The opposition Popular Front party considers the detention and the grounds for Alishov’s arrest, political. According to the party, Alishov often exposed fake social media accounts deployed by the state, targeting the party, reported Turan News Agency on May 30. The activist also often identified stolen or hijacked social media accounts of opposition activists.  

While the Ministry of the Interior has confirmed the arrest of the political activist, it has denied that the motives behind the arrest are political. Noting the party member’s arrest, the leader of the Popular Front, Ali Karimli said the arrest was part of the rotating door policy referring to a number of recently released political prisoners and the need to “fill out the emptied spots in prisons.” 

On May 27, President Ilham Aliyev signed a presidential pardon decree. Among 168 prisoners released were also several political prisoners, reported Meydan TV.

On June 2, the appeal court in the city of Ganja reviewed Alishov’s complaint appeal where the activist was informed that the original charge of drug possession was aggravated to Articles 234.4.1 and 234.4.3 of the Criminal Code [Manufacturing, purchase, storage, transfer, transportation or selling the drug by a group of persons or organized group with a view of illegal manufacturing and processing of narcotics or psychotropic substances].

Relevant articles of the penal code: 

Article 234. Illegal manufacturing, purchase, storage, transportation, transfer, or selling of narcotics, psychotropic substances;

234.1. Illegal purchase or storage without a purpose of selling of narcotics or psychotropic substances in a quantity (amount) exceeding necessary for personal consumption – is punished by imprisonment for a term up to three years.

234.2. Illegal purchase or storage with a view of selling, manufacturing, processing, transportation, transfer, or selling of narcotics or psychotropic substances – is punished by imprisonment for a term from three up to seven years with confiscation of property or without it.

234.3. Manufacturing, purchase, storage, transfer, transportation, or selling drugs with a view to illegal manufacturing and processing of narcotics or psychotropic substances – is punished by imprisonment for a term up to three years with confiscation of property or without it.

234.4. The acts provided by articles 234.2 and 234.3 of the present Code, committed:

234.4.1. on preliminary arrangement by group of persons or organized group;

234.4.2. repeatedly;

234.4.3. in large amount – is punished by imprisonment for the term from five up to twelve years with confiscation of property.

 

Azerbaijan’s troll factory revealed [Updated Dec. 22]

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Ever since 2013 revelations about Russia’s troll factory, many in Azerbaijan wondered whether the country’s leadership too operated its very own troll factory. Unlike its Russian version, known as the Internet Research Agency, there was only anecdotal evidence of whether this was really the case in Azerbaijan. There were no former “factory” employees who came forward or undercover journalists who temporarily worked there and exposed the work carried out later. Not until this month anyway. An investigation against the executive director of the State Media Support Fund Vugar Safarli now reveals that the suspicions were valid after all. And that upon specific instructions a group of “bloggers” were responsible for monitoring Facebook and leaving comments under posts that were critical of the government or relevant government institutions. 

The investigation is part of a criminal case launched against Vugar Safarli who until recently headed the State Fund for Media Development in Azerbaijan. Safarli was arrested in 2020 on charges of money laundering (allegedly 20million AZN) and abuse of authority. 

On September 2, Azerbaijan Service for Radio Free Europe, Azadliq Radio published parts of the testimony by Safarli where the former government official implicates not only that the government did indeed deploy trolls but that several high ranking officials including then Presidential advisor Ali Hasanov and former head of the Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev were well aware of this. Moreover, the building from where trolls operated belonged to Hasanov himself. 

“Ali Hasanov told me that the new rented space, will have internet bloggers who will work from there. And indeed there were a few, who sat there, working unofficially,” Safarli reportedly said in his statement according to Azadliq Radio reporting. 

“We were especially paying a closer attention to Facebook. Each of us operated a large number of fake profiles, which we used to leave comments. These comments were planned ahead of time. We would receive them in the morning. And that’s why often these comments were similar to each other as they were posted from different profiles,” shared one of the former employees who spoke to Azadliq Radio on condition of anonymity.

But leaving comments en masse was not the only requirement. “The Presidential Administration would send us topics of the day that we had to research and prepare material on. Then those materials were posted on various pro-government media platforms and published on pro-government television,” explained anonymous blogger in an interview with Azerbaijan Service.

Over the years, authorities denied any involvement in mass trolling or deployment of troll armies including Ali Hasanov himself who was known among government critics as the “King of trolls.” He repeated this as he was exiting office in January 2020 in an interview with BBC Azerbaijan service: “There is no army of trolls in Azerbaijan. There is simply the public supporting the president.” 

That public supporting the president was also mentioned by current member of the parliament Zahid Oruc, who told Azadliq Radio in a phone interview that “the party does not see millions of citizens who defend the leader of the current government as trolls.” 

Oruc did not directly deny the operation of troll armies in Azerbaijan. Instead, he said, “the party considered it incorrect to present a massive number of comments written on various platforms and coordinated from one single location as a government policy.”

Previously the ruling part of New Azerbaijan denied the operation of troll armies in Azerbaijan. Most recently the ruling party was exposed in a series of investigations released by The Guardian.   

A month prior to the release of The Guardian investigation Azerbaijan Internet Watch published this story exposing how some 500 inauthentic accounts on Facebook (almost all of them were set up as pages) targeted a Berlin-based online news platform Meydan TV and this story uncovered a similar pattern of targeting against another independent online news platform Mikroskop Media.

That the ruling government in Baku deployed trolls was not at all surprising. Surely, activists who had their own suspicions for the years have relied on the Internet and specifically the social media platform Facebook as the government silenced dissent offline. As the crackdown against Azerbaijan’s civil society intensified and culminated with the arrest of some of the high profile civil society activists in 2014 as well as targeting of independent news platforms, including Azadliq Radio, the internet, and specifically social media platforms became the remaining avenues for freedom of speech advocates who took to the platform to criticize the policies and decisions of the official Baku. Independent online news platforms, continue to rely on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to disseminate news as many of their websites are blocked for access in Azerbaijan.

Will Safarli’s exposure of the former government officials and their direct involvement in running a troll army change anything? Highly unlikely that the government of Azerbaijan survives on its greatest political tool – denialism.

[Update] Vugar Safarli was sentenced to ten years and six months on December 21, 2021, on charges of embezzlement of state funds. According to Turan News Agency, his business partners were too sentenced. 

Facebook looks the other way when it comes to Azerbaijan and others – The Guardian investigations show

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Almost a month after AIW published this story about how some 500 inauthentic Facebook pages targeted Berlin-based independent online news platform Meydan TV, little has changed. While all of the pages that targeted Meydan TV remain active, someone else has taken notice. 

On April 13, The Guardian published this story explaining how Facebook allowed state-backed harassment campaigns, target independent news outlets, and opposition politicians on its platform.  

The story mentions the case of Azad Soz (Free Speech) and how the post shared on March 4 about two men sentenced to eight months received over 1.5k comments. It analyzes the top 300 comments and discovers that 294 out of 300 comments were inauthentic Facebook pages.  

Just like in the case of Meydan TV. 

The Guardian cites Sophie Zang’s work during her time at Facebook, working for the team tasked with “combating fake engagement, which includes likes, shares, and comments from inauthentic accounts.” During her research, Zhang uncovered “thousands of Facebook pages- profiles for businesses, organizations, and public figures – that had been set up to look like user accounts and were being used to inundate the Pages of Azerbaijan’s few independent news outlets and opposition politicians on a strict schedule: the comments were almost exclusively made on weekdays between 9am and 6pm, with an hour break at lunch,” writes The Guardian journalists Julia Carrie Wong and Luke Harding. 

Wong and Harding also mention the platform’s response mechanism. “The company’s vast workforce includes subject matter experts who specialize in understanding the political context in nations around the world, as well as policy staff who liaise with government officials. But Azerbaijan fell into a gap: neither the eastern European nor the Middle Eastern policy teams claimed responsibility for it, and no operations staff – either full-time or contract – spoke Azerbaijani.”

But the story of Facebook and Azerbaijan is not the only one that The Guardian identified loopholes with. “The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff. The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small, and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea, and Poland, while moving slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Mexico, and much of Latin America.”

Honduras 

The administration in Honduras relied on astroturfing to attack government critics. Sophie Zang discovered how Juan Orlando Hernandez – the authoritarian leader – “received hundreds of thousands of fake likes from more than a thousand inauthentic Facebook pages” that were set up to look like Facebook user accounts. Very similar to what happened in Azerbaijan, in the case of Azad Soz and Myedan TV. And just like it was in the case of Azerbaijan, in the case of Honduras, the platform took nearly a year to respond.

Russia 

During 2016 US election, Russia’s Internet Research Agency set up Facebook pages to “manipulate individuals and influence political debates” pretending to be Americans.

Facebook’s intervention was much faster in the case of Russia targeting US elections, likely the result of “Facebook’s prioirty system for protecting political discourse and elections,” wrote Wong, in another story in The Guardian.   

As a result of this kind of cherry picking, Facebook’s response mechanism worked faster in the Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Ukraine and Poland but not in countries where similar inauthentic behavior was spotted such as Azerbaijan, Mexico, Honduras, Paraguay, Argentina and others. The difference in response rate was as quick as 1 day in the case of Poland and as long as 426 days in the case of Azerbaijan. 

Many others were left uninvestigated at all. Among them, Tunisia, Mongolia, Bolivia, and Albania. 

Back in Azerbaijan, at the time of writing this post, pages that targeted Meydan TV remain, and even if they are removed, nobody knows how long it will take Facebook to respond, next time, such behavior is spotted.