Meta takes down a troll farm run by the Nicaraguan government since 2018 that involved 937 Facebook accounts, 140 Pages, 24 Groups, and 363 Instagram accounts
Company says it took down hundreds of accounts, pages and groups ahead of Sunday's election — Meta's Facebook has accused …
The Nicaraguan government-linked operation immediately loses 937 Facebook accounts, 140 Pages, 24 Groups, and 363 Instagram accounts as channels for coordinated distribution ahead of the election.
Meta must absorb the moderation, investigation, and enforcement burden of removing a network that had operated since 2018 across both Facebook and Instagram.
Second-order effects
Other state-linked operators face a clearer risk that long-running, domestically focused networks will be identified and removed, consistent with Meta’s later tally of operations spanning more than 100 countries.
Meta’s cross-product enforcement raises the cost of rebuilding influence infrastructure: operators cannot simply shift activity between Facebook accounts, Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts after a single surface is disrupted.
Third-order effects
If this pattern persists, platform trust-and-safety teams become a standing part of the information-security response to domestic political influence, not merely a reaction to isolated election-period abuse.
The later emergence of influence campaigns using AI-generated disinformation in Meta’s 2024 removals suggests that enforcement will increasingly be judged by whether it can detect coordinated behavior across changing content-production methods.
The trend: State-linked influence operations are becoming a durable cross-platform moderation problem, with detection centered on coordinated behavior rather than any one account type or content format.
And here is Nicaraguan Sandinista activist Franklin Ruiz G. @ElChequelito, whose personal account was censored by Facebook, which falsely claimed he is a government-run bot/troll. Still no comment on this political censorship by @Meta @benimmo @DavidAgranovich @ngleicher @olgs7 h…
Here is the head of security policy at Facebook FALSELY claiming the Nicaraguans they suspended were “run by the government” That is categorically not true. I know dozens of journalists, activists, and average people whose personal accounts were deleted. Do you all even care? htt…
You're so full of it. You took down the accounts of prominent Nicaraguan activists the week of their election. You're meddling in the foreign affairs of other nations and it's disgusting. https://twitter.com/...
US regime censor Ben Nimmo oversees another phony purge, erasing real people from social media because their views and political affiliation interfere with imperial objectives. @ligiasevilla_ is just one of his victims. More soon at @TheGrayzoneNews https://twitter.com/... https:…
1/ Today we shared the removal of a domestic CIB network in Nicaragua that was run by the government of Nicaragua and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party.https://about.fb.com/...
A Nicaraguan journalist friend of mine who does not work for the gov't and is NOT a bot/troll had her personal Facebook account suspended. She made a new one and it was just purged too. Does FB now ban all Nicaraguans who support the Sandinistas? @DavidAgranovich @olgs7 @benimmo …
This is another Nicaraguan Sandinista supporter, Daniela Cienfuegos @dani100sweet, an activist in the Red de Jóvenes Comunicadores, which Facebook/Instagram suspended and falsely claimed is a gov't bot farm. Any comment from @Meta? @benimmo @DavidAgranovich @ngleicher @olgs7 http…
The good: Meta/Facebook took down a giant troll farm apparently run by the Nicaraguan government. The bad: It has been running since 2018, and stretches across more than 1,500 accounts, pages and groups https://www.ft.com/...
This is a good start, Facebook/Meta/whatever you calling yourselves. What took you so long? Those of us targeted and harassed by these accounts for years, could have told you it was a troll farm. Wonder how many more totalitarian gets running same scam. https://www.reuters.com/..…
Insane! Facebook/Instagram falsely claimed left-wing Nicaraguans are govt-run bots, censoring them. So they posted videos on Twitter showing they're real. But now Twitter is suspending them too! This is a coordinated purge of Sandinistas, days before Nicaragua's Nov. 7 election h…
Here is Nicaraguan Sandinista activist Ligia Sevilla @ligiasevilla_, who was censored by Facebook @Meta falsely claimed she's a “fake account,” part of a government-run “troll farm” Will Facebook retract its false claims and restore her account? @benimmo @DavidAgranovich @olgs7 h…