Facebook Election Bots From Ghana's Bawumia & Fake Kosovo American Accounts

Monday, 8 July 2024

By: TB Obwoge

In Ghana there are claims that around 80% of the news media outlets are owned by politicians. You can tell sometimes but the covers of the newspaper where the news outlets loyalty lies.

Facebook is Facebooking again and you would think that they would do better but the money must be better. There are several accounts that are pushing fake information and Trump's MAGA people are the ones falling for this. 

Ironically the same spam is filling Ghana's social media platforms in the way of their Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia. There are hundreds of Facebook accounts spamming the platform with the same copied and pasted comments.

On the cover of this Daily Post newspaper, a Ghana newspaper, you can see the photo on the bottom left, this is the president of Ghana Akufo-Addo. This paper often re-uses this same unflatering photo of Akufo-Addo to make him look as if he's mentally unstable or better yet has a oddly shaped head

This is a commin political use of this disparaging photo, they do it just about every time they want to mock the president.

There are too many accounts to account for that post election posts about the VP of Ghana. Whenever there are any posts about the elections they comments sections on Facebook are filled with these such accounts.

When looking into one of the accounts I couldn't help but notice that one of the accounts had not had any posts on them for several years. This is the same for these American accounts that have overtly American rhetoric posted on them.

U.S. says Russian bot farm used AI to impersonate Americans

The U.S. Department of Justice said it disrupted a Russian propaganda campaign using fake social media accounts, powered by artificial intelligence, to spread disinformation in the U.S. and other countries.

The bot farm used AI to create profiles impersonating Americans on X, formerly known as Twitter, and to post support for Russia's war in Ukraine and other pro-Kremlin narratives.

It was part of a Kremlin-approved and funded project run by a Russian intelligence officer. The bot farm itself and the AI software behind it were organized by an unnamed editor at RT, the Russian state-owned media outlet, the Justice Department alleged.

Intelligence and security officials have been warning that Russia is ramping up propaganda efforts in a busy global election year, with the goals of undermining international support for Ukraine and discrediting democratic adversaries. The Kremlin has long used fake social media accounts to sow discord and advance its own interests.

"Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government," FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

Source NPR News

The many accounts that you can find on Facebook are using AI created photos as well as posts about the American flag, the American military and veterans. These posts are tagged with a location but the locations are in Kosovo and only a few people even care.

What is the connection here between Ghana elections and the Ameircan elections? I am still wondering, however can there be some group using the same means to flood the timelines of Facebook users?

These accounts are always active, the comments are often the same when it comes to Ghana.

However when it comes to these American bot accounts, there are hundreds of thousand followers. Some of the pages though were once about other topics, one page was a cooking page, the other believe it or not is an account run by Native Americans.

Suddenly the posts are about the American flag and student loan debt, these posts are not normal for accounts run by Native Americans in my Facebook using experiences.

This is the new face of election medeling and its ugly, especially because most of the social media users don’t seem to notice these fake accounts. Especially for the American accounts, people think these pages are real, even one page which used to be deadicated to Native Americans.

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