FAR RIGHT NETWORKS OF DECEPTIONAVAAZ INVESTIGATION UNCOVERS FLOOD OF DISINFORMATION, TRIGGERING SHUTDOWNOF FACEBOOK PAGES WITH OVER 500 MILLION VIEWS AHEAD OF EU ELECTIONS
22/05/2019 - Avaaz ReportFAR RIGHT NETWORKS OF DECEPTION
Avaaz investigation uncovers flood of disinformation, triggering shutdown
of Facebook pages with over 500 million views ahead of EU elections.

22/05/2019

CONTENTS
Executive Summary

6

The Takedown: 500M Fewer Views of Disinformation

8

The Networks of Deception Across the EU

8

Bigger Than All Far-Right Party Pages Combined

11

Far-Right Disinformation Tactics

12

How the Investigation was Conducted

13

Disinformation Networks Explained: Tactics & Content

141) Germany - Fake Accounts Boosting the AfD

142) UK - The Art of Amplifying Divisive Content

243) France - Fake News, Dehumanizing and White Nationalist content

284) Italy - A Tide of Disinformation Backing the League and 5 Star

32

5) Poland - Facebook removes 27 pages with 1.9 million followers

366) Spain - Facebook takes down 3 far-right networks

40

Avaaz’s New Proposal to Fight Disinformation

46

Research and Data Analysis Methodology

48

Glossary

51

5

1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Ahead of the EU elections, Avaaz conducteda Europe-wide investigation into networks of
disinformation on Facebook. This was the firstinvestigation of its kind and uncovered that
far-right and anti-EU groups are weaponizing
social media at scale to spread false andhateful content. Our findings were shared with
Facebook, and resulted in an unprecedented
shut down of Facebook pages just before
voters head to the polls.
Our findings show that:JJ Disinformation networks removed by

Facebook as a result of this investigation
posted content viewed an estimated halfa billion (533M) times over the last threemonths. This means that, on average, these
networks produced content that was seen
almost 6 million times per day.

JJ In total, Avaaz reported over 500 suspect

pages and groups to Facebook, whichwere followed by nearly 32 million people
and generated over 67 million “interactions”(comments, likes, shares) in the last threemonths alone.

JJ Facebook has already taken down 77 of

the pages and groups reported, accounting
for about 20% of all interactions across thereported networks.

JJ Together, the pages removed had almost

three times more followers (5.9 million)
than the pages of the main European farright and anti-EU parties, League, AfD, VOX,
Brexit Party, Rassemblement National and
PiS, combined (2 million).

Our report focuses on two main aspects
of disinformation on Facebook. Firstly, it
exposes pages, accounts and groups thatare spreading “disinformation content,”
classified as false or purposefully misleading
information. Secondly, it identifies networks
that are using “disinformation tactics,” suchas the systematic usage of fake accounts,

6

misleading page name changes, or inauthentic
coordination to amplify content in a way thatappears to breach the social media platform’s
own policies. We then define “disinformation
networks” as groups of pages either spreading“disinformation content,” using “disinformation
tactics,” or doing both. All the pages werereported to Facebook between April and earlyMay 2019.
After demonstrating the scope of these
disinformation networks, this report showcases
real world examples: from fake accounts
amplifying AfD content in Germany to pages
spreading disinformation and white supremacist
content in France, to dozens of pages createdwith generic themes in Italy to attract followers
which are then turned into pro-League and 5
Star fake-news sharing pages.
Key findings include:
JJ In Germany, fake accounts and pages

were boosting the reach of the far-right
AfD party and spreading disinformation on
Facebook. We found an AfD politician who
appears to have been involved in runninginauthentic multiple accounts to amplify the
AfD message. We also found illegal content
on Facebook, including swastikas and posts
supporting Holocaust-deniers. Over 131
suspicious accounts reported and eightpages/groups have already been removed by
Facebook.

JJ In France, 44 pages and groups wereidentified: one network spreading
disinformation, and others posting
dehumanizing, racist and white nationalist
content, targeting migrants in particular.
The main white nationalist page has alreadybeen removed by Facebook and three havebeen demoted for repeatedly spreading
disinformation.

JJ In Italy, 14 networks were discovered, many

supporting the League and 5 Star movement,
which spread either false information

or content with divisive anti-migration andhateful messages ahead of the EU elections.
Facebook shut down 23 pages with over
2.46 million followers as a result of Avaaz’s
findings.
JJ In the UK, we identified three networks

engaging in what Avaaz reported as suspectspam behavior to boost low-trust websites,
and another set of pages and groups inopen support of dangerous individuals
and groups banned by Facebook, suchas Tommy Robinson.1 We also identified
numerous duplicate and fake profiles
operating on the latter. Facebook has
already removed 132 posts, pages andgroups reported to them.

JJ In Poland, three networks were found tobe spreading, with great frequency andcoordination, across almost 200 pages andgroups, divisive content covering a rangeof anti-immigration and anti-EU topics aswell as false and misleading information.
Facebook has removed 27 Polish pages with
1.9 million followers.

JJ In Spain, three far-right networks werediscovered spreading disinformation andhateful content. Most of the pages were
supporting the far-right Vox party andwere mainly managed by fake or duplicate
accounts. Facebook removed 17 pages with
1.43 million followers days before Spain’s
national elections in April.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Most users exposed to content spread by
the networks uncovered in this report willprobably never know that they were in manycases the victims of deliberate attempts todeceive them. The single most important
thing Facebook can do to protect our
democracies is to counteract the influenceof such coordinated disinformation
campaigns by adopting “Correct the
Record,” which means that Facebook must:• immediately issue corrections from verified
fact-checkers to every single user who has
seen or interacted with disinformation on
the platform; and• inform followers of pages that have beentaken down or demoted about the malignefforts of those pages.
At the same time, Facebook has allowed far
too much suspicious activity and malicious
content to spread. It needs to clean up its
house and immediately run a proactive andEU-wide scan for further suspicious activity
on its platform, like the mass use of fake andduplicate accounts to coordinate the spread of
disinformation content, misleading page namechanges, inauthentic behavior, or spamming
techniques.

1

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-ban-edl-britain-first-bnp-far-right-racistimmigration-islamophobic-a8876036.html

7

THE TAKEDOWN:

2500M FEWER VIEWS OF DISINFORMATIONThis report is the result of three months of investigation conducted in
six European countries -- Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy,
Poland and Spain -- to fight the spread of disinformation ahead of the EU
elections. A team of investigative reporters, researchers and data analysts
monitored disinformation operations across the continent, focusing on
identifying fake news and hate speech, uncovering the networks driving
them, and working with platforms and governments to take action
against malign actors and issue corrections to false information.

The Networks of Deception Across the EU
PAGES REPORTEDUNITED KINGDOMPOLANDTOTALS

65 Profiles, Pages and Groups

878 Profiles, Pages and Groups

237 Profiles, Pages and Groups
1,347,997 Followers

31,991,749 Followers
67,442,042 Interactions

8,041,442 Followers
11,826,130 Interactions
16,666,287 Interactions

GERMANYFRANCE

323 Profiles, Pages and Groups

898,918 Followers
50 Profiles, Pages and Groups
2,203,344 Interactions
1,748,674 Followers

3,889,682 Interactions

SPAIN

ITALY

41 Profiles, Pages and Groups

162 Profiles, Pages and Groups

1,694,718 Followers

18,260,000 Followers

9,766,599 Interactions

23,090,000 Interactions

Figure 1.1 - Number of profiles, pages and groups, plus total followers and interactions generated in thelast three months by the pages and groups flagged to Facebook within the Avaaz investigation

8

(3 months)
Spain

content (3 months)

9,700,373

39.813363

300,541,589

Italy
2,444,096
39.81336
97,307,674
Our investigation uncovered 550 pages and groups and 328 profiles that either
Poland these pages
975,31439.81336
38,830,527
managedor were engaged in coordinatedamplification of content
in manners we suspected violated Facebook’s policies. They were followed byGermany
196,555
39.81336
7,825,515
about 32 million accounts and, during the last three months, they racked up
morethan 67 million
interactions as shown in Table
1.2. The table also includes
France28,81639.81336
1,147,262
networks, which we define as groups of pages posting and sharing content inUK
39.81336
1,735,862
coordination
with43,600
each other.

Total

533,051,283

THE FULL SCOPE OF AVAAZ’S INVESTIGATIONCountry

Networks

Pages & Groups

ProfilesFollowers

Interactions past 3
months

Spain

3

31

10

1,694,718

9,766,599

Italy

14

113

49

18,260,000

23,090,000

Poland3

197

40

8,041,442

16,666,287

UK

3

46

19

1,347,997

11,826,130

France3

44

61,748,674

3,889,682

Germany

11

119

204

898,918

2,203,344

TOTAL

37

550

328

31,991,749

67,442,042

Table 1.2 - Total number of suspect networks, pages, groups and profiles flagged
to Facebook as part of Profiles
the Avaazremoved
investigation
Percentage of& or under
Posts/Links Followers Interactions
Interactions
Country Pages
Groups investigation
removedpast 3 months prevented
Spainthe results of
17the investigation were
8 handed over
0 to
1,439,332
After
Facebook, the9,700,373
socialmedia
so far has taken
Italy platform ran
23 its own independent
8 investigation
15 and2,460,000
2,444,096
down 77 pages and groups and 230 of the accounts reported, accounting for
Poland27
43
1,929,686
975,314about
20% of all traffic
across the networks
reported,0 andsuspended about
66%
1.4.
UK of the profiles1as shown in Table37
132
4,551
43,60099.32%

France1

3

7

19,79328,8160.74%

Germany8131

057,124

196,555

8.92%

TOTAL

77

230

154 5,910,486

13,388,754

19.85%

10.59%
5.85%
0.37%

9

PAGES REMOVEDUNITED KINGDOMTOTALS

38 Profiles, Pages and Groups

307 Profiles, Pages and Groups

Country
Documented interactions
5,910,486 Followers(3 months)
13,388,754 Interactions

POLANDEngagement rate

Estimated views of70 Profiles, Pages and Groups
content (3 months)

4,551 Followers

436 Interactions

Spain

9,700,373

39.813363

300,541,589

1,929,686 Followers

Italy

2,444,096

39.81336

97,307,674

975,314 Interactions

Poland975,314

Germany

196,555

FranceUK

39.81336

GERMANY

4 Profiles, Pages and Groups

39.81336

139 Profiles, Pages and Groups

28,816

19,793 Followers

39.81336

57,124 Followers

43,60028,816 Interactions

39.81336

196,555 Interactions

FRANCE

38,830,527
7,825,515
1,147,262
1,735,862

Total

533,051,283
ITALY

SPAIN

Country

Networks

25 Profiles, Pages and Groups

Spain 1,439,332 Followers
3

Pages & Groups

ProfilesFollowers

31

10

1,694,718

Interactions past 3
months31 Profiles, Pages and Groups

2,460,000 Followers

9,766,599

14

113

49

18,260,000

2,444,096 Interactions

Poland3

197

40

8,041,442

16,666,287

UK

3

46

19

1,347,997

11,826,130

Italy

9,700,373 Interactions

23,090,000

France344 and total followers
6 and interactions
1,748,674generated
3,889,682
Figure1.3 - Numberof profiles
in the last threemonthsby the 11
pages and groups
after
the Avaaz investigation
Germany
119 removed by Facebook
204
898,918
2,203,344
TOTAL

37

550

328

31,991,749

THE FACEBOOK DISINFORMATION TAKEDOWN
Profiles removed
Country Pages & or underGroups investigation

67,442,042

Percentage of
Followers Interactions
Interactions
past 3 months prevented

Posts/Links
removed

Spain

17

8

0 1,439,332

9,700,373

99.32%

Italy

23

8

15 2,460,000

2,444,096

10.59%

Poland27

43

0 1,929,686

975,314

5.85%

UK

1

37

132

4,551

43,6000.37%

France1

3

7

19,79328,8160.74%

Germany8131

057,124

196,555

8.92%

TOTAL

77

230

154 5,910,486

13,388,754

19.85%

Table 1.4 - Number of suspect pages, groups, profiles and posts removed by Facebook
following the Avaaz investigation10

Bigger Than All Far-Right Party Pages Combined
To understand the scale of the disinformation
networks taken down by Facebook, we provide
a comparison with the reach of the main EU farright and anti-EU parties.
The results are overwhelming: thedisinformation networks upon which Facebook
acted had more interactions (13 million) in
the past three months than the main party
pages of the League, AfD, VOX, Brexit Party,
Rassemblement National and PiS combined (9million).

Although interactions is the figure that best
illustrates the impact and reach of these
networks, comparing the number of followersof the networks taken down reveals aneven clearer image. The Facebook networks
takedown had almost three times (5.9 million)
the number of followers as AfD, VOX, Brexit
Party, Rassemblement National and PiS’s main
Facebook pages combined (2 million).

Figure 1.5 Followers and interactions of the main far-right and anti-EU parties pages compared withthose of the disinformation networks removed by Facebook

11

Figure 1.6 A screenshot from Facebook’s monitoring site CrowdTangle, showing the numberof followers, interactions and other key statistics of the main far-right and anti-EU parties

Far-Right Disinformation Tactics
The investigation was able to uncover similar
patterns that these disinformation networks
used across all countries, many of which violatesocial media policies. Here are the ones we
identified as the most common:
JJ Using fake and duplicate accounts: The

creation and use of several duplicate or
fake accounts to either amplify content ormanage groups and pages. Avaaz believes
that some of the most common reasonsfor this behavior are: artificially boosting
interactions with the content being sharedby pages; hiding the real identity of thepeople managing groups and pages toavoid responsibility; and making sure thatpages sharing “extreme” content can keep
publishing even when some of the accounts
are removed or suspended by Facebook forviolating their policies.

JJ Abnormal coordination and sharing ofalternative outlets: The second mostcommon behavior we detected is abnormal
coordinated behavior, in which pages andgroups mostly share and post content in a

12highly coordinated manner from a handful of
specific “alternative outlets,” with little or no
editorial reputation. Many of those outlets
highlighted in the report are publicly known
in their countries for reporting fake news,
disinformation and using clickbait tactics.
JJ Recycling followers: A key tactic used bymany pages are deceptive name changes. For
example, pages that were originally started as
lifestyle groups, music communities or local
associations are being turned into far-rightor disinformation pages, “recycling followers”
and serving them content completely
different than what they had initially signed
up for.

JJ Bait and switch: An example is when

networks create pages with names thatcover nearly the entire spectrum of popularinterest: football, beauty, health, cooking andjokes. Once the audience is built, the pageadmins appear to deliberately start boosting
political or divisive agendas, often in acoordinated way, on pages that, at face value,
should be completely unrelated to politics.

How the Investigation was Conducted
On January 16 2019, Avaaz launched acrowdfunding campaign to kickstart anunprecedented EU-wide anti-disinformation
investigation, powered by social media analysts,
investigative journalists, data researchers andour network of almost 20 million members
across the EU. The vision was clear: to protect
Europe’s democracies from the proliferation ofdisinformation.
In just a few weeks, over 47,000 Avaaz
members donated to make this vision a
reality: 100% of the Avaaz budget for thisproject comes from small online donations,ensuring its editorial independence.
We hired a team of experts with the money
we raised. These Avaaz researchers reviewed
thousands of public pages, groups and websites
identified by independent fact-checkers as
spreading disinformation, or content that is
hateful or inciting violence. They used theFacebook monitoring platform CrowdTangle
to aggregate specific topics that are common
targets of disinformation online, such as
migration, political figures, vaccines, EU, public
figures, unemployment and others.

At the same time, we recruited tens of
thousands of volunteers all across Europe who
flagged thousands of pieces of disinformation,
fake news and hate speech through the website
www.fake-watch.eu, WhatsApp and other channels.
Finally, our team drew up aggregated lists ofthousands of suspect pages and, through data
analysis, was able to identify the levels to which
they were coordinating. We also identified key
admins and individuals behind them. All theinformation in this investigation was retrieved
with publicly available data.
The results of the investigation were thenshared with Facebook, which conducted its
own independent investigation before taking
enforcement actions. Avaaz did not establish aformal partnership with Facebook at any point
during this investigation.

13

3

DISINFORMATION NETWORKS EXPLAINED:TACTICS & CONTENTIn this section we provide summaries of theinvestigations Avaaz conducted into suspected
disinformation networks and the pages connectedto them in six EU countries, as well as the actions
Facebook took as a result of these investigations.

1

GERMANY

FAKE ACCOUNTSBOOSTING THE AFD

The far-right party AfD (Alternative für
Deutschland) is by far the most successful
German party on Facebook, with 85% of allshares from political parties across the country,
according to a recent study, conducted by
Georgetown University Professor Trevor Davis.
According to Spiegel,2 experts suggest that AfD’s
success might in part be relying on “dubious
helpers” that appear to help it reach this highlevel of activity. Avaaz’s investigation provides
evidence to support these findings.
Our report now shows that the reach of AfD
is actually boosted by fake and duplicate
accounts, and that some AfD candidates
themselves appear to have been involved inrunning inauthentic accounts to spread farright content. As of May 20, 2019, Facebook
took action against 131 fake and duplicate
accounts and eight pages and groups, manyof them sharing pro-AfD and far-right content.
In total Avaaz reported 204 profiles and 119
pages. Facebook is still investigating for further
violations.

142

https://www.spiegel.de/plus/warum-die-afd-auf-facebook-so-erfolgreich-ist-a-00000000-0002-0001-0000-000163612064

TACTICS EMPLOYED: THE AFD’S ‘DUBIOUS HELPERS’The Laleh Hadjimohamadvali accounts
Before we turn to the fake accounts, we
present an example of multiple accounts (oneof which has already been taken down byFacebook) of one person, AfD member Laleh
Hadjimohamadvali. Hadjimohamadvali used
these accounts to disseminate pro-AfD content.
Hadjimohamadvali was a candidate for the AfD
in the elections for Landtag (state parliament) in
Saarbrücken and Bundestag (federal parliament)
in 2017. She is currently a candidate for the
position of mayor in Saarbrücken.3 On May
13, we observed four accounts,4 each clearly

showing Laleh Hadjimohamadvali’s image
on their profile. It is a breach of Facebook’s
Community Standards on Misrepresentation
to “maintain multiple accounts.”5 It is possiblethat an account was set up by anotherindividual, using her name and photo. However,
we found personal videos and photos ofHadjimohamadvali across all four accounts, andthree of the four profiles are “friends” with eachother.
On May 17, within 24 hours of being alerted tothe accounts, Facebook removed one of them,the Laleh Mohamad6 account.

AfD politician Laleh
Hadjimohamadvali7
has multiple profiles on
Facebook. The one on the
top right was taken down
by Facebook following
Avaaz’s investigation.

3

https://www.saarbruecker-zeitung.de/saarland/saarbruecken/saarbruecken/laleh-hadjimohamadvali-will-fuer-afdoberbuergermeisterin-von-saarbruecken-werden_aid-37357121
4
https://www.facebook.com/laleh.walie / http://archive.is/eVmlC / https://www.facebook.com/steven.becker.75457 / http://archive.is/
YnfX9 / https://www.facebook.com/laleh.haddjimohamadvali / http://archive.fo/vThpE /https://www.facebook.com/karl.katschonga / http://archive.is/npArO
5
https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/misrepresentation/
6
https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/steven.becker.75457
7https://www.afd.de/person/laleh-hadjimohamadvali/

15

Three out of Hadjimohamadvali’s four Facebook profiles are connected as “friends.” On the right isa group picture showing Hadjimohamadvali, Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland. This picture wasused on Facebook by the accounts named Laleh Hadjimohamadvali and Laleh Vali.

THE BROADER NETWORK OF INAUTHENTIC AFD ACCOUNTS
Other local AfD politicians, such as Peter Schmalenbach8, are friends with at least two ofHadjimohamadvali’s multiple profiles, Laleh Vali and Laleh Wallie9. In total, we identified
22 possible fake and duplicate accounts directly connected to Schmalenbach. Of course it
is possible that when Schmalenbach befriended these profiles he was not aware of them
being inauthentic10. We flagged all of these potential issues to Facebook. As of May 20,
2019, seven out of the 22 profiles flagged to Facebook were shut down.

Screenshots of friends of the profile Peter Schmalenbach, showing likely fake and duplicate accounts(highlighted in yellow)

http://archive.is/959dy. Archived friends list of Peter Schmalenbach: http://archive.is/LKkpc
Schmalenbach disseminated fake quotes of the vice-president of the EU commission F. Timmermans in the past on
Facebook. Source: https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/europa/2019/04/25/nein-der-vizepraesident-der-eu-kommissionfordert-nicht-die-ausradierung-monokultureller-staaten/10
http://archive.is/LKkpc (Peter Schmalenbach’s friend list)
8916

On the left we see that Peter Schmalenbach is friends with the duplicate profiles “Laleh Walie” and “Laleh
Vali.” On the right, we see that Schmalenbach is friends with Johann Z. who manages several AfD fan pages/
groups, as described below.
Peter Schmalenbach himself disseminated fake quotes11 falsely attributed to the Vice-Presidentof the EU commission, Frans Timmermans12.
Screenshot of the fake quote. Freely translated
it says: “Monocultural states must be erased.
The future of humanity is no longer based on
single nations and cultures, but on a mixed
superculture. The mass migration of Muslim
men to Europe is required for this purpose.
No country should be left out of this inevitable
mixing of cultures - but migrants should be
induced to reach even the most remote placeson this planet (Europe). All this to ensurethat homogenous communities can remain
nowhere.”Screenshot containing same
fake news. Freely translated it
says: The vice president of the EU
Commission wants to “eradicate”
European states and replace themwith “mixed supercultures!”

While this quote is fictitious, its origins can apparently be traced back to a speech of Timmerman from October 1st, 2015: “Europe will
be diverse, like all other parts of the world will be diverse. The only question is, how do we deal with that diversity? And my answer tothat is, by ensuring that our values determine how we deal with diversity and not giving up our values to refuse diversity. That will bringus down as a society.” Source: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5754_en.htm
12https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/europa/2019/04/25/nein-der-vizepraesident-der-eu-kommission-fordert-nicht-die-ausradierungmonokultureller-staaten
11

17

AMPLIFICATION OF AFD CONTENT
In addition to accounts, also AfD fan pages and groups like AfD Demokratie Freunde“Gruppe,”13 AfD Deutschlands Gruppe14 and AfD Gruppe Bürgerpartei15 were taken down byFacebook after we reported them. The five groups and seven pages16 of this network areclosely coordinating their posting, and all of them publicly support the AfD party in Germany.
Our evidence shows that these groups and pages are connected to each other and lead backto the profile of Johann Z., a self-described AfD supporter living in Germany.

The screenshots in this image show that Johann Z. manages three groups on Facebook and that thesegroups - and Johann Z’s profile - are administrators and moderators of several other groups and pages(AfD Deutschland “Gruppe,” AfD Fanclub Bundesweit “Gruppe,” AfD-Meine Partei “Gruppe,” AfD Gruppe
Bundesweit, AfD Fanclub Deutschland).

https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/afddemokratiefreunde/
https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/groups/afddeutschlandgruppe
15
https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/afdgruppebuergerpartei/
13
14

16

AfD-Gruppe Bundesweit# (public group) (4,805 members, n/a#), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/groups/afdgruppebundesweit/

AfD Fanclub Deutschland# (public group) (3,398 members, 1,522 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/groups/afdfanclubdeutschland/
AfD Fanclub Deutschlandgroup# (page) (1,856 followers / 1,816 likes, 437 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/afdfanclubdeutschlandgroup/
AfD Freunde Hagen# (public group) (1.847 members, 11,790 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/groups/afdfreundehagenwestf/
AfD Deutschland Gruppe# (public group) (1,123 members, 12,723 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/groups/afddeutschlandgruppe
AfD Deutschlands Gruppe# (page) (205 followers / 201 likes, 0 interaction), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/afddeutschlandsgruppe/
AfD Die Volkspartei Gruppe# (page) (1,368 followers / 1,342 likes, 170 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/AFD-Die-VolksparteiGruppe-383086178765891/
AfD Fanclub Bundesweit# (page) (168 followers / 163 likes, 19,999 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/afdfanclubbundesweitgruppe/
AfD Demokratie Freunde "Gruppe"# (page) (885 followers / 846 likes, 159 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/afddemokratiefreunde/
AfD Fanclub Bundesweit Gruppe# (page) (883 followers / 845 likes, 2,323 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/groups/1403884349757024
AfD Gruppe Bürgerpartei# (page) (246 followers / 243 likes, 0 interaction#), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/afdgruppebuergerpartei/
AfD Meine Parteigruppe# (public group) (308 members, 1,372 interactions), https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/groups/afdmeineparteigruppe

18

The following screenshots show how these pages and groups are used to spread content, sharing
one article almost simultaneously,17 thereby boosting its apparent popularity on Facebook.

The pages AFD-Freunde Hagen"Gruppe," AFD-Fanclub Bundesweit"Gruppe," AFD-FANCLUB BUNDESWEIT "Gruppe" and AFD-Meine Partei"Gruppe" and AFD-Deutschland"Gruppe" all posted on the same day, between 15:38 and 15:42 GMT.
17

19

CONTENT SHARED
Content being shared by the AfD fan pages, groups and profiles include posts
from MP Beatrix von Storch and the main AfD page. The sharing of content in thisway helps these “official AfD posts” reach more Facebook users.

The groups AFD Fanclub Deutschland and
AfD-Gruppe Bundesweit share “official” AfD
content from the Facebook pages of AfD,
Beatrix von Storch and AfD MP Johannes
Huber.

20

Screenshots showing how Johann Z., Peter Schmalenbach - and his “friends” and likely inauthentic
accounts - Dirk B, and Geri A. are all sharing official AfD content.

21

POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL CONTENTOther accounts and pages found in the research, not connected to the pages above, sharecontent on Facebook that appears to be in breach of German law. In Germany it is illegal to
publicly use certain symbols associated with Nazi iconography, according to §86 and §130 of
the German penal code.
We believe the content described below is either illegal, or attempts to get around Germany’s
strict laws on the use of Nazi symbols.18
An individual19 who publicly declares to be an AfD voter20 uses what looks like ananimated Hitler salute (Hitlergruß) gif in a discussion on Facebook on January 16.21 Even
though the original gif was not intended as a Nazi salute, in the context of this forum it is, in
our view, clearly meant to reference that banned iconography.

22

23

The screenshot on the top left appears to show the profile of an AfD voter who uses what looks like an animatedHitler salute in a comment (top right). The screenshot on the bottom right shows the prohibited Swastika. Such
imagery may only be shown in exceptional cases, i.e., in official educational material.

22

In Germany it is also illegaI to deny the Holocaust happened. This violates §86 and §138 of
the German penal code. In our research, we found content praising those who have denied
the Holocaust. In this post on the left, the author claims that the convicted Holocaust denier
Ursula Haverbeck is an example of a person “speaking the truth”.

http://archive.is/bSZOZ
http://archive.fo/5Ugsb
20
One photo contains an “I vote AfD” sign
21
https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.facebook.com/photo.
php?fbid=297087907830022&set=a.103379350534213&type=3&theater22
http://archive.fo/5Ugsb
23
http://archive.fo/roIhR
18
19

23

2

UNITED KINGDOMTHE ART OF AMPLIFYINGDIVISIVE CONTENTIn the report Avaaz presented to Facebook
on May 8, we identified 46 pages andgroups that were in potential breach of
the platform’s Community Standards andpolicies. We identified three networks
engaging in what Avaaz reported assuspect spam behavior, and another setof pages and groups in open supportof individuals and groups banned by
Facebook for repeatedly sharing hatefulcontent and inciting violence against
Muslims and other groups.24 We also
identified numerous duplicate and fakeprofiles operating on the latter.

As of May 18, Facebook had removed
132 out of 295 direct links mentioned in
the report, including posts, profiles, pages
and groups. Another 37 profiles were
either removed or under investigation.
Facebook’s UK investigation is still ongoing.

ABNORMAL COORDINATION TO BOOST LOW-AUTHORITY WEBSITES
We identified three “alternative media”
networks engaging in what Avaaz reported as
containing elements of spam behavior to boost
three websites: Political UK25, UK Unity News
Network26 and The Daily Brexit.27 Together, these
networks have had 1.17 million followers.
As part of our analysis we mapped 709 Facebook
Pages in the UK and collected 190,745 posts they
sent between February 3 and May 7, 2019. We
observed that these “alternative media” allappeared in the top 20 most shared websites
in the UK, sometimes above The Guardianand BBC UK, despite being low-authority sites
according to independent rankers28, with oneof these outlets, “The Daily Brexit,” having anahref domain rating (a metric commonly used todetect spam links) of 0.4 in a scale from 0 to 100.
Together, these networks had nearly 5 million
interactions in the past three months.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-ban-edl-britain-first-bnp-far-rightracist-immigration-islamophobic-a8876036.html
25
http://archive.fo/Unsom 26 http://archive.fo/bJkQd 27 http://archive.fo/TDMMp
28
We obtained the domain ratings by using ahref.com, a well-known SEO tool provider boasting the world's largest
index of live backlinks that is updated with fresh data every 15-30 minutes. “Domain ratings” are a scale (1-100) which
illustrate the quality of sites which link back to pages on another site. See /moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
24

24

DISTRIBUTION OF INTERACTIONS FOR POSTS LINKING TO SUSPICIOUS DOMAINS

Activity such as the same content being reposted multiple
times by pages and groups, at almost the exact same time,
seems to indicate either automated posting or coordination
by a handful of individuals.
For the example below, we took screenshots of a postshared at the exact same time, on May 4, 2019, at 7:57pm,
on pages that are part of the Political UK News network:

25

SUPPORT FOR BANNED INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPSThe Avaaz report also identified profiles
and pages that continue to show support
and/or encourage users to follow banned
figures such as Tommy Robinson, who
was banned from Facebook for having“repeatedly broken [community] standards,
posting material that uses dehumanizing
language and calls for violence targetedat Muslims.”29
Facebook has detailed rules both about
hate speech and about dangerous
individuals who are organizing hate. The
rules also state they will “remove content
that expresses support or praise for groups,
leaders, or individuals involved in these
activities.”30 An example of one of thesepages is the Pro Great Britain page, included
in our report to Facebook, which is still
operative and openly supports Robinsonand his agenda:

Screenshot taken on May 18, 2019 at 3pm CET.31

Further examples provided in the report include the “For Britain Movement,” an official
political party that grew out of UKIP; its party leader, Ann Marie Waters; pages within theFootball Lad Alliance (FLA) or the Democratic Football Lad Alliance (DFLA); and a page
named the Enoch Powell Institute, which has been removed by Facebook.

32

Posts by For Britain - North West and Enoch Powell
Institute that show praise and/or support of banned
figures and groups such as Tommy Robinson and
Britain First

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/02/removing-tommy-robinson/
https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/dangerous_individuals_organizations
31
http://archive.fo/B1sLT
32
http://archive.fo/ANQIM
33
http://archive.fo/ANQIM
29
30

26

33

CONTENT SHARED
In our investigation we found violent imagery spread via Facebook groups and pages.
Below are two examples from the report:
This screenshot shows a post fromthe “Sargon of Akkad (Carl Benjamin)
Discussion Group,” linking to a (nowremoved) blog post claiming that “Abillion Muslims want Sharia Law.”

Football Lad Politics reposted
an image, originally in a
tweet by Christine Hamilton,
comparing the burka with the
KKK-hoods.

34

34

http://archive.fo/VrtQE

27

3

FRANCE

FAKE NEWS, DEHUMANIZING AND
WHITE NATIONALIST CONTENT

Avaaz identified and investigated three
networks in France. One systematically spreads
false news on a large scale, another shares
mainly inflammatory, dehumanizing, politicallydivisive messages, targeting migrants andforeigners, in particular. Another network
promoted white nationalism and “scientificracialism.” Together, these networks had a total
reach of over 1.7million followers.
After Avaaz submitted its findings, Facebook
demoted the main La Gauche M’a Tuer35(LGMT) official page, as well as La Révolte Des
Vaches à Lait and Peuple de France réveilletoi for their repeated spread of fake news,
in line with its new “Reduce, Remove, Inform”
strategy, which includes “reducing the reachof Facebook groups that repeatedly sharemisinformation.” Together, the three pages have526,339 followers. They also removed one of
the main pages, “Suavelos,” promoting whitenationalism, as well as three inauthentic
profiles.

35

28

http://archive.fo/fQClC

TACTICS EMPLOYED:COORDINATED SHARING OF DISINFORMATION
AND HATEFUL SPEECH
Avaaz identified a repeated pattern of sharing identical content on each of the three
networks. We also identified a likely fake profile as the admin of three of the pages whose
posts closely synchronize alongside La Gauche M’a Tuer.
One example of close coordination to spread disinformation and hate speech is this postfrom the La Gauche M’a Tuer network, published on April 26, and reposted that same day
by several pages simultaneously between 6:43 am and 6:44 am. The posts, although
clearly identical, were posted as if they were “original” on each of the pages; there was no“share” indication and therefore no trace of the original post.

The post is in breach of Facebook policies on hate speech and includes many unfoundedstatements, and it dehumanizes immigrants who have found refuge in France by saying
they are scum and alleging they rape children and women.36 An extract from the post reads:“These left politicians continue to let us be invaded by millions of foreigners who cometo Europe only with one goal … get aid, submit their religions, rape our children, yourwomen, and declare war on us [...]”

36https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/hate_speech/

29

FURTHER EXAMPLES OF CONTENT SHARED:La Gauche M’A Tuer
In 2017, Le Monde conducted an analysis of
the number of fake news posted by a selectionof websites and La Gauche M’a Tuer ranked
first for 2017. That year, LGMT received
more “likes” on Facebook than Liberation.fr
according to Le Monde37.
Below is a screenshot from the Decodex
website, Le Monde’s fact-checking agency:
The text in red reads, “This site disseminates asignificant amount of false information and /or misleading articles. Stay alert and seek othermore reliable sources. If possible, go back to theorigin of the information.”

Examples of fake news by LGMT:This screenshot is from a Le Mondefact-checking article citing a fakenews item published on the La
Gauche M’a Tuer website: “A rumor
spread by several unreliable sites
says that 55% of French people
would already be exempt fromhousing tax. It’s wrong.”

This post38 on the LGMT site shows President
Macron’s wife and says that Brigitte Macron would
cost the French public 200,000 euros a month. Thiswas debunked in an article in Liberátion, whichsays, “No, Brigitte Macron is not going to cost the
French 200,000 euros a month.”

37
38

30

http://archive.fo/mt3np
http://archive.fo/RJZVRSuavelos
The website “Suavelos” (to which the
Facebook pages are related) promotes“white nationalism”39 and “scientificracialism.”40
Below is an example of content they shared:”#Italy(video): “We cannot expect an African toknow that rape is not allowed in Italy.” 41

The post (now removed) read:42“This article praises the merits ofa homogeneous society using theexample of Denmark [...]. Of course
it falls short of specifying which
homogeneity we’re talking about. It
is apparently neither the homogeneityof the Arab countries, nor the
homogeneity of the African countries,
but the white homogeneity thatguarantees prosperity, happiness,equal opportunities, the status of
women and of the general security of asociety.”

http://archive.fo/HLvZk
http://archive.fo/dEj1t
41
http://archive.fo/KvU4N
42
http://archive.fo/UYiEP
39
40

31

4

ITALY

A WAVE OF DISINFORMATIONBACKING THE LEAGUE AND 5 STAR

In Italy, the Avaaz investigation led
Facebook to shut down 23 Italian
Facebook disinformation pages withover 2.46 million followers for breachesof the platform’s policies, such as pagename changes that transformed nonpolitical pages into political and partisan
ones; the use of fake accounts; hate speech;
inauthentic pages and spam behavior.
These pages were spreading false
information and divisive anti-migrantcontent, ahead of the EU elections. Amongthe pages, half were in support of the
League or 5 Star. The pages had more
followers than the official pages of the
League (506K followers) and 5 Star (1.4
million followers) combined. They also
generated over 2.44 million interactions overthe last three months.
But the pages Facebook removed are
just the tip of the iceberg: Our fullinvestigation identifies 14 main networks
in apparent breach of Facebook’s rules
on misrepresentation, page and groupname change, spam and related policies.
They include 104 pages and eight groups,
with a total of 18.26 million followers and23.09 million interactions in the last threemonths.

32

Many of the pages that have not been
removed appear on two blacklists
maintained by the fact-checking anddebunking websites butac.it and bufale.net
that are widely used in studies and analyses
by leading journalism institutions (e.g.
Reuters Institute), governmental agencies(e.g. the Italian Communication Authority
Agcom) and researchers and Universities(e.g University of Venice, Rome and IMT).
Despite many of these pages having beenin these disinformation blacklists for years,
their continued high activity indicates that
this has not led to their demotion.

CONTENT

The post in which Saviano defends himself and denies saying what was attributed to him.

The most active of the pages taken down by Facebook
is “Vogliamo il movimento 5 stelle al governo” (We want
the 5 Star in Government), an unofficial page in supportof the 5 Star Movement. An example of an item fromthat page is a made-up quote falsely attributed to theanti-mafia Italian writer and journalist, Roberto Saviano,
saying he would “prefer to save migrants than Italianearthquake victims.” He never said it, but was forced todeny it.
Despite the recent takedown, this page has beenreported to be part of a much wider disinformation
network in support of the 5 Star Movement, which was
also included in the Avaaz report sent to Facebook.
The most active League-supporting page, “Lega Salvini
Premier Santa Teresa di riva,”43 which was also removed
by Facebook following our report, was the biggest
recent sharer of a video purporting to show migrants
smashing a police car. The video, which has almost 10
million views, is actually a scene from a movie and has
been debunked several times over the years, but is stillwidely shared.
Below is a list of the main sharing pages extracted using
the Facebook monitoring platform CrowdTangle.

43

http://archive.fo/Ttpuy

33

TACTICS EMPLOYED:MISLEADING PAGE-NAME CHANGESThis happens when a page with non-political content suddenly changes its nameor identity to become political or partisan, retaining all its likes and followers, who
often remain unaware of the change but start to receive political content.
The page below began as an agricultural breeders’ association of the Messina
province and eventually became a League-supporting local chapter. The change
was made one word at a time, gradually, and any automatic checks carried out by
Facebook were likely not triggered because of the ambiguity of the world “League”:

Another example, the page NOISIAMO 5 stelle (now removed)changed its name eight times,
from a very general page for
football fans, “Calcio Passione,”
to “Music on the World” and thenending up as a political page.

34

FAKE PROFILES
An example of a fake profile is a League-supporting page managed by a person using
the name “Bernardo Paguro.” As shown in the screenshots below, the admin accountfor this page appears to have been removed or suspended by Facebook after Avaaz
reported it, but the page itself is currently still active.

The page after the suspension or takedown of
the likely fake account.

CONTENT AND SUSPECTED COORDINATEDINAUTHENTIC BEHAVIOR
Another example of a page taken down for violations of Facebook’s rules is “I Valori Della Vita”(“The value of life”), with more than 1.5 million followers. Our research showed that the page,
which looks like a generic lifestyle page, is actually part of a bigger network, whose pages share,in a coordinated manner, content from the well-known far-right news site Leggilo.org.
The following table shows the frequency and coordinated posting among these pages:

FREQUENCY OF PAGES POSTING LINKS TO LEGGILO.ORG

35

5

POLANDFACEBOOK REMOVES 27 PAGES
WITH 1.9 MILLION FOLLOWERS

The Avaaz investigation identified three
networks in Poland spreading, with great
frequency and coordination, across almost 200
pages and groups, divisive content covering
a range of anti-Semitic, anti-immigration andanti-LGBT topics as well as false and misleading
information.
As of May 18, 2019, Facebook has removed
27 pages with over 1.9 million followersthat were part of the networks and has taken
down for investigation 18 of the duplicatedaccounts connected to them.

DESCRIPTION AND REACH
The three networks our investigation uncovered, Supernetwork(Otopress/ Propublico/ Prawdaobiektywna); Publiszer; andInna Polityka, which we named after the media outlets theylink to, spread politically divisive content on 197 pages andgroups.
Together, the networks had a reach of over 8 million​​ ​followers,
with some 16,666,287 total interactions in the past threemonths alone.
Among the duplicated accounts that were removed, one belonged
to the owner of Otopress.pl, one of the media outlets we haveseen posting disinformation in the Supernetwork, and four out of
the five accounts of Arkadiusz L., an admin of the group “​I support
Zbigniew Ziobro​“ (the minister of justice of the ruling party PiS),
which widely disseminated pro-PiS content.

36

TACTICS EMPLOYEDOne of the most common tactics within the networks is using page name changes
and misleading name changes. Facebook removed 27 pages based on such violations.
For example, pages titled “Typical Pole,” or “Poles are World Champions in Men’s Volleyball,”and three fan pages that appear related to John Paul II all suggest the type of content thatcan be expected, but in fact, they mainly share links to articles from fake-news websites
like publiszer.pl, or the right-wing wmeritum.pl, or te-mysli.pl, a simple clickbait site.
Our investigation found misleading name changes of 53 pages within the networks, which
follow a similar pattern to the example below:

This page, which spread fake news within the Publiszer network (taken down after our investigation), went
through seven name changes: “A fool “→ “There is as much hatred in me as falseness in you, bitch”Arial
Narrow “You had a chance, now you can think you are a dick” → “I am Polish - White and Red” → “You
had a chance, now you can think you are a dick” → “You had a chance, now you can think loan via theInternet” → to its current name Pożyczka przez internet “Loan via the Internet”4444

http://archive.fo/Ttpuy

37

EXAMPLES OF CONTENT AND SUSPECTED
COORDINATED INAUTHENTIC BEHAVIORa) Story: Migrant taxi drivers rape women across Europe
This fake story suggests that migrant drivers rape European women, citing an example ofa woman raped in Warsaw. The post includes a photo taken from a Polish movie, “I am themurderer.” This fake story was reposted several times since February, always implying that it
was “breaking news.”
The post, linking to an article in Publiszer.pl, was shared by 26 pages (11 of which have since
been taken down by Facebook) within the network on April 29, one after the other,between 5:17 and 5:28 pm CET.45 Below a sample:

45

38

Screenshots show posting time in PST.

b) Story: Donald Tusk was STASI and SB agent
This article46 suggests that Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and former Prime
Minister of Poland, was a STASI and Polish communist agent. The article first appears on thewebsite Propublico24.pl. The Propublico piece later admits that “there is no written proof” ofthe claim, but that “every STASI and SB agent admits it.”At least four of the pages on this network shared the original Propublico article on March 6
2019, at exactly the same minute, 11 am CET. Seven minutes later, Zbigniew W., the adminof a page in one of the investigated networks, whose two accounts have been taken down forinvestigation, also shared the article in one of the groups:

46

Link to the article here (http://archive.is/Dj30w)

39

6

SPAIN

FACEBOOK TAKES DOWN
3 FAR-RIGHT NETWORKS

Avaaz’s investigation found three far-right
networks in Spain, with a reach of 1.7 million
followers, using fake and duplicate accounts tomanage and coordinate several pages to spread
both disinformation, as well as politically divisive
content ahead of the Spanish elections held
April 28 2019.
We presented our findings to Facebook on
April 12, and on April 23, five days before theelections, the platform took action against theaccounts behind those pages for violations of
their policies, leading to a total takedown ofat least 17 pages with more than 1.4 million
followers:

CONTENT SHARED
Three examples of content sharedby these networks are:a) Fake news about a childcancer center being closed down
by “Catalan separatists” in favorof leaving “Catalan embassies”
open:“Torra closes down hospital units forkids with cancer but keeps Catalan‘embassies’ open.”40

JJ Unidad Nacional Española (UNE): 10

pages with 1,202,533 followers taken down,
including the duplicate accounts of the
Admin, Javier Grau.

JJ Todos Contra Podemos: 6 pages with

114,147 followers taken down, including
many duplicate accounts of the Admin,
Antonio Felix Aguilar.

JJ Lucha por España: 1 page with 122,727

followers taken down for deceiving namechanging breach.

b) Doctored images of Podemos leader
Pablo Iglesias doing the Nazi salute:“The insults and the lack of backing Podemos is garnering
lately after the European rallies were held are clear
evidence of the LOW level of their crazy proposals, absurd
points and incorrect behavior.”c) Unfounded claims that the Moroccan
government demanded free education for
Moroccan students in Spain in exchange
for acting on illegal immigration:“Morocco blackmails Spain: Demands that
Moroccans have their education paid for in
exchange for controlling illegal immigration”d) One website passing as a media
outlet sharing fake statistics about
foreigners committing the majority ofrape crimes:
the post reads: “Magrebs are not even 2%of the population but carry out 22% of gangrapes. And some think that the solution to thisproblem is hiding it.” The headline reads: “In
Spain, with only 10% of foreigners the nonSpanish men are responsible for 53% of all
rapes.”

41

TACTICS EMPLOYED:DUPLICATE PROFILES
The Avaaz investigation demonstrates how these networks are each managed by individuals
using several duplicate accounts. Each network coordinates the activity of its pages, often almost
exclusively resharing each other’s content, likely in order to simulate fake public support for theircontent without being publicly transparent about this coordination.
We found clear evidence of how multiple accounts were managing both the Unidad Nacional
Española and Todos Contra Podemos networks, in an apparent breach of Facebook’s Community
Standards.
For example, the first network was managed by Javier Grau, who presents himself as the creator andcoordinator of the Unidad Nacional Española movement (see image below). He appears in numerous
videos posted on the UNE page, acting as solo spokesman, and had a Facebook group and two
different Facebook profiles (removed by Facebook following our investigation here and here47).

A post showing Javier Grau as
creator and coordinator of
Unidad Nacional Española.

The duplicate profiles were used to manage the different pages and groups of the network, where
we identified various instances of suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior aimed at amplifying
particular content in a non-organic fashion.

47

42

http://archive.fo/o7lvE, http://archive.fo/gaBho, http://archive.fo/N9dMi

SUSPECTED COORDINATED INAUTHENTIC BEHAVIOR
As an example, we took a picture initially shared by Unidad Nacional Española on March
27 at 6:55 pm, which was then posted that same day by all of the pages in the networkin an apparently coordinated way between 8:20 pm and 8:33 pm. The posts, although
clearly identical, were posted as if they were “original” on each of the pages; there
was no “share” indication, and therefore no trace of the original post. This is just one casebut, looking at the timelines of those pages and groups, we found other instances where
they all simultaneously shared the same content.

43

PAGE NAME CHANGING
The third network appeared to also be engaging in suspected coordinated inauthentic
behavior and name changes that breached Facebook policy. The page renaming seems to
be an effort to mislead Facebook users and to increase likes and shares before the namechange took place.
A stark example of this tactic was the name changing of the page Lucha por España, which
was initially created in 2013 and until 2017 gathered followers as a page about freemovies (“películas” in Spanish). In September 2017, it changed from being a non-politicalpage to a political one, mainly publishing far-right and biased content.

Lucha por España Page changed names four times in the past five years. In chronological order the names ofthe page, freely translated, were: “Watchmoviesforfree.es” (2013); “Watch Movies” (August 15, 2017); “Moviesof Spain” (August 25, 2017); and now, “Fight for Spain” (since September 4, 2017).

44

45

4

AVAAZ’S NEW PROPOSAL TO
FIGHT DISINFORMATIONAs this report shows, Facebook has
allowed far too much suspicious activity
and malicious content to slip past
its safeguards and poison our public
discourse. Facebook needs to immediately
clean up its house; it should run a proactiveand EU-wide scan for further suspicious
activity on its platform, such as the mass useof fake and duplicate accounts to coordinate
the spread of disinformation, misleading
page name changes, inauthentic behavior,or spamming techniques.
However, the single most important
thing Facebook can do to protect
our democracies and counteract the
influence of coordinated disinformation
campaigns is to adopt “Correct the
Record” and immediately begin issuingcorrections from verified fact-checkers toevery single user who has seen or interactedwith disinformation on the platform, andinform followers of pages that have been
demoted or taken down about the malignobjectives of those pages.
Millions of Europeans have been
exposed to the lies, manipulation, andhate described in this report, and theoverwhelming majority of them will neverfind out about it. And neither will thebillions more who will be exposed during
the next election, and the next one afterthat -- unless Facebook acts now.

48

46

http://time.com/5540995/correct-the-record-polling-fake-news/

Put simply, “Correct the Record” is the ideathat every user who has been exposed
to disinformation deserves to be shown
corrected information from factcheckers. Time magazine48 described it as a“radical new proposal [that] could curb fakenews on social media.” And the platforms
themselves have to do it, no one else can.
Studies from researchers at top universities
like MIT, the University of Michigan andGeorge Washington have shown that
corrections are highly effective. Facebook
already informs users who have shared orwant to share fake news that have been
debunked by fact-checkers; now they justneed to scale it up and show it to all users
who have seen or interacted with it. And theother platforms need to follow suit.

In our view, “Correct the Record” would be a five-step process:DEFINE: The obligation to “Correct

the Record” would be activated when
independent fact-checkers verify that
content with significant reach is false or
misleading;DETECT: Platforms must make iteasy for users to report potential
disinformation and for fact-checkers toaccess all content with significant reach.

VERIFY: Platforms must work withindependent, third-party, verified
fact-checkers to determine whether
reported content is disinformation.

ALERT: Each user exposed to verified

disinformation should be notified
immediately using the platform’s mostvisible notification standard.

CORRECT: Each user exposed todisinformation should receive a
correction that is of at least equal
prominence to the original content andthat follows best practices.

“Correct the Record” isn’t just good for democracy, it’s good forbusiness. Between 81% and 92% of people in Europe’s largest
democracies agree that companies like Facebook should workwith independent fact-checkers to offer verified corrections toeveryone exposed to false or misleading content. More importantly,
78% or more of citizens in those countries say that this measure
would improve their image of social media companies.

47

5

RESEARCH AND DATAANALYSIS METHODOLOGYHow we arrived at the estimate of the total views
generated by the removed disinformation networks:
Based on our analysis of data from thepages and groups, we estimate that the
Facebook takedown removed content thatwas viewed an estimated half a billion (533
million) times over the last three months.
We calculated these views by using amethodology similar to the one usedduring previous reporting.49

Viewership calculationfor videos:
Facebook provides viewing data for videos.
We followed Facebook’s definition of what
constitutes a “view,” that is, a viewing
experience that lasts three seconds orlonger.

Viewership estimation
for images and text:
Facebook discloses the number of views forvideos, but for posts containing only text
and image content the platform displays
only the number of shares and otherinteractions, such as likes or comments.
Therefore, in order to estimate viewershipfor text and image content we designed
a metric based on the publicly available
statistics of the Facebook videos analyzed
in our study, taking into account the total
number of video views and dividing it by
the total number of video interactions.
Facebook reports a “video view” only after"Yellow Vests Flooded by Fake News", pag 14
https://avaazimages.avaaz.org/Report%20Yellow%20Vests%20FINAL.pdf
49

48

three seconds, while an image or text canbe considered as “viewed” and having an
actual impact in less than three seconds.
Therefore, the estimation of total viewsin this study is a conservative one andlikely lower than the content’s actual total
viewership.

Engagement rate calculation
for images and text:
We computed an EU-wide metric called
the video engagement rate, which we
calculated by dividing the total video
views by the total video interactions
for all countries. Based on the video
views/interactions, the EU-wide video
engagement rate was 39.81 views perinteraction.
We then added together the total numberof documented interactions with text andimage content for each country over athree-month period, and multiplied it by
the video engagement rate to estimate
total views.50
Because we only carried out our
calculations based on documented
interactions, and that data was only
available for a subset of the total numberof pages on which we compiled evidence,
our final estimate of total views is very
likely lower than the actual total viewershipof all removed content and therefore canbe considered a conservative figure.

How did we arrive at a half-billion
estimated views?
In summary, our calculation of estimated views looks like this:Step 1:(total video views) / (total video interactions) =(video engagement rate)

Step 2:(video engagement rate) x (documented 3-month interactions) =(estimated 3-month views)

Country

Documented interactions(3 months)

Engagement rate

Estimated views ofcontent (3 months)

Spain

9,700,373

39.813363

300,541,589

Italy

2,444,096

39.81336

97,307,674

Poland975,31439.81336

38,830,527

Germany

196,555

39.81336

7,825,515

France28,81639.81336

1,147,262

UK

43,60039.81336

1,735,862

Total

Country

533,051,283

Networks

Pages & Groups

ProfilesFollowers

Interactions past 3
months

Spain

3

31

10

1,694,718

9,766,599

Italy

14

113

49

18,260,000

23,090,000

Poland3

197

40

8,041,442

16,666,287

UK

3

46

19

1,347,997

11,826,130

France3

44

61,748,674

3,889,682

50
49
Germany
119 for 21 out204
898,918
2,203,344
In Poland we had data on11
documented interactionsof the 27 pages;in Spain 14 out of 17;

in Italy 14 out of 23; in France 1 out of 1; in the UK 1 out of 1; in Germany 3 out of 8.

TOTAL

37

550

328

31,991,749

67,442,04249

Related Avaaz reports on
disinformation and elections:
In addition to the network investigations
described in this report, which led toaction by Facebook, Avaaz also produced
a report focusing on WhatsApp in Spain,
showing that disinformation and hatredon that platform reached about 9.6 million
potential voters ahead of the 2019 Spanish
legislative elections.
The European anti-disinformation
campaign was launched with a reportshowing that fake news circulating the
French Yellow Vest movement had reachedover 105 million views. The campaign
follows a pilot campaign in Brazil, where asmall team of researchers was able to get
Facebook to take down a disinfo networkwith 12.6 million followers.
The Avaaz community has 50 million
members worldwide, including about
20 million in Europe. Leading up to the
EU elections, the Avaaz disinformation
campaign plans to detect and deter
disinformation on social networks andrelease studies similar to those describedabove.
This report is part of Avaaz’s Disinformation
Project and aims in part to investigate,
analyze, and expose disinformation onsocial media and the networks behind it.

50

We report openly on what we find, so
we can alert and educate social media
platforms, regulators, and the public, andso we can more effectively advocate forsmart solutions to defend the integrityof elections and our democracies fromdisinformation.
This report is part of that effort andsummarizes an investigation to: identify
and track disinformation content on
Facebook to assess its reach/impact;
identify and track groups/channels,
networks, bots, “coordinated inauthentic
activity” across the platforms; andcollect specific examples of breaches ofFacebook’s terms and standards in orderto urge Facebook to investigate and takeaction.

6

GLOSSARY
JJ Disinformation Networks: Networks refers toa group of people or pages working together
or sharing the same content. We call them“disinformation networks” when they’re sharing
false news, disinformation and hate speech, or
are using tactics to amplify content in ways thatappear to breach Facebook’s terms of use.

JJ Disinformation content: Is content that isclassified as false or purposefully misleading
information.

JJ Disinformation tactics: Tactics that include thesystematic usage of fake accounts, misleading
page name changes, or inauthentic coordination
to amplify content in a way that appears to breachthe social media platform’s own policies.

JJ Interactions: Interactions on Facebook include
any action that a user performs on an account,
page or group, including likes, shares andcomments.

JJ Coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB): whengroups of pages or people work together tomislead others about who they are or what they’re
doing. (From Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity
Policy.)JJ Suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior(CIB): We use this term when we suspect accounts
and pages may be involved in what Facebook
defines as “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
We qualify our findings as “suspected” CIB, as theamount of publicly available data on accounts andpages is too limited to make a final determinationon their authenticity.

JJ Inauthenticity: using false or misleading

information to collect likes, followers, or shares(spam); creating duplicate or multiple accounts(misrepresentation); or circulating disinformation
or fake news.

JJ Fake accounts: we use “fake accounts” as anumbrella term to capture several different kindsof behavior banned by Facebook’s community
standards, which require users “to connect on
Facebook using the name they go by in everyday
life.” Fake accounts include accounts thatmisrepresent the user’s identity; impersonate
others; use fake names or pictures; or participate
in coordinated inauthentic behavior -- behavior
that misleads users about the origin of content;

51

about the destination of links; to get moreinteractions; or to facilitate or conceal a violationof Facebook’s community standards. (FromFacebook’s definition.)

JJ Alternative outlets: These are media outlets withlittle or absolutely no editorial reputation. Most of
those outlets are publicly known in their countries
for reporting fake news and disinformation.

JJ Hate speech: Violent or dehumanizing speech,

statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion
or segregation based on race, ethnicity, national
origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation,
caste, sex, gender, gender identity, serious diseaseor disability, and, in some cases, immigration
status. (Adapted from Facebook’s definition.)JJ Spam: Using false or misleading information,

fraud, or security breaches in order to collectlikes or other interactions either to artificially
increase distribution for financial gain;
encouraging likes, shares, or clicks under false
pretenses; or maliciously using login credentials.
(From Facebook’s definition.) Facebook havealso acknowledged that while spam commonly
involves the offer of fraudulent products orservices, they “have seen spammers increasingly
using sensational political content” to build anaudience and drive traffic to their websites.51

JJ Pages: Facebook’s pages feature allows “public

figures, businesses, organizations and otherentities to create an authentic and public presence
on Facebook.” Users can ‘follow’ a page andreceive the pages posts in his or her newsfeed.
(Taken from Facebook’s definition.)

JJ Groups: Facebook’s groups feature allows“small group communication and for people toshare their common interests and express theiropinion.” Groups can be public or private, andcan allow anyone to join, require administrator
approval for new members, or be invitation-only.
Content posted to a group appears in subscribedusers’ newsfeeds. (Taken from Facebook’s
definition.)

JJ Follower: a user who has subscribed to(‘followed’) another person, page, or group andreceives updates in their newsfeed when that
person, page, or group posts new content.

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/inauthentic-activity-brazil/

5122/05/2019

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