Facebook removes Georgian accounts and pages engaged in Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior
By Khatia Bzhalava
Thursday, May 7
Facebook publishes April 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report, in which Alongside the US, Iran, Russia, Mauritania and Myanmar, Georgia is also mentioned. According to the report, Facebook took down a total number of 732 accounts, 162 Instagram accounts, 793 pages and 200 groups that had been violating the policy.
According to the report, when Facebook finds domestic, non-government campaigns that include groups of accounts and Pages seeking to mislead people about who they are and what they are doing while relying on fake accounts, they remove both inauthentic and authentic accounts, Pages and Groups directly involved in this activity.
511 Georgian Pages, 101 Facebook accounts,122 Groups and 56 Instagram accounts were deleted due to engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior. (CIB)
The report states that individuals behind these activities used fake accounts to create fictitious personas, impersonate opposition leaders and local health officials, manage Groups and Pages, and make their content appear more popular. Some of these groups went through name and admin changes over time and appear to have been purchased. The people behind this network also ran Pages designed to look like user profiles — using false names and stock profile images — to post and amplify their content, as well as to avoid detection and removal.
According to the report some of these Pages posed as independent news outlets. The Page admins and account owners typically posted about domestic news and political issues such as elections, government policies and officials, as well as criticism of the opposition, journalists, and local activists. Most recently, this network shared some content about COVID-19, including posts that were removed for violating our policies against harmful health misinformation.
Despite the attempts of the people behind the operations to hide their identities, investigations linked them to Espersona, Georgian Media Firm. The organisation currently remains banned from the platform.
Facebook also took down 23 Facebook accounts, 80 Pages, 41 Groups, and 9 Instagram accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior and linked them to the ’United National Movement’ Georgian opposition party.
“The individuals behind this activity used a combination of authentic and fake accounts to comment on content, evade detection and removal, and manage Groups and Pages — some of which posed as news entities. They frequently posted about local news and political topics like the 2018 Georgian elections and candidates, Georgian Orthodox Church, criticism of the ruling party and the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Many of these pages have not been active since 2018,” reads the statement.
The United National Movement denies any connection with these events, saying that these types of political activities are unacceptable and address political parties and leaders to abstain from attacking their party.
“First of all, we welcome the steps taken by the administration of Facebook in direction of executing the spread of fake information by inauthentic and unidentified accounts. ‘National Movement’ and party leaders are exactly one of the main targets of such pages. We categorically announce that the ‘National Movement’ has never, nor will ever run unidentified pages. We support every radical measure that restricts the spread of fake news in social media. Any page, regardless of the position of the owner, should be taken down,” reads the Facebook post published on the official page of the United National Movement.
The post also states that the sources of contempt and fake information, spread by Lasha Natsvlishvili, Koka Kandiashvili and Shalva Ramishvili, are Russian Federation on the one hand and the Georgian Dream on the other.
Koka Kandiashvili, the owner of Espersona and former PR consultant of the Georgian Dream, is still known to be close to the party.
Mamuka Mdinaradze, one of the leaders of the ruling party stated to the press that Kandiashvili is an active supporter of the Georgian Dream, though he does not have any official connection to the party since 2013-2014.
As Mdinaradze noted, kandiashvili has been operating in the Georgian media for a long time and has represented various agencies at different times. Now he owns media agency Espersona, but as MP said he has no official connection or any kind of contract with Georgian Dream and neither Facebook could refer to the above.
Deputy of the parliament and former member of the ruling party, Tamar Chugoshvili, who left the Georgian Dream last year, expressed her astonishment with regard to Mdinaradze’s statement, as she explains to have met Kandiashvili at work, whilst she was working with the party.
Koka Kandiashvili himself expresses his sympathies towards the Georgian Dream and says that he has been one of the most active supporters of the party since day one, however, he also clarifies that he has not been a public worker since 2014.
