{"id":18059,"date":"2019-05-18T22:27:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-18T22:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=18059"},"modified":"2019-05-18T22:27:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-18T22:27:17","slug":"facebook-closes-pro-buhari-accounts-managed-by-israeli-firm-to-dent-atikus-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=18059","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Closes Pro-Buhari Accounts Managed By Israeli Firm ‘To Dent Atiku’s Image’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some accounts created by an Israeli firm named Archimedes has been closed by Facebook.
\nThe accounts, before their closure, were used purposely for disseminating smear campaigns against Atiku Abubakar, Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and eulogizing President Muhammadu Buhari.
\nMany of the pages and accounts were discovered to be linked to a Tel Aviv-based political consulting and lobbying firm named Archimedes.
\nOn its sparse website of African stock images, the company advertises its deliberate efforts to conduct disinformation campaigns, boasting that it takes \u201cevery advantage available in order to change reality according to our client\u2019s wishes\u201d through \u201cunlimited online accounts operation.\u201d
\nFacebook banned Archimedes from its platform on Thursday for its \u201ccoordinated and deceptive behavior\u201d and conducted a sweeping takedown of dozens of accounts and hundreds of pages primarily aimed at disrupting elections in African countries, with some scattered activity in South-East Asia and Latin America.
\nAs of the time of closure, the misleading counts had reached some 2.8 million users, and the pages had engaged over 5,000 followers, according to Facebook\u2019s estimates
\nOne of the pages that Facebook canceled appeared filled with viral misinformation attacking Atiku, a former Vice-President.
\nThe report further reads, \u201cThe page\u2019s banner image showed Abubakar as Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, holding up a sign reading, \u2018Make Nigeria Worse Again\u2019.
\n\u201cAnother page with almost identical visuals, although significantly excluding the Darth Vader mask, purported to support Atiku, with the slogan \u2018Team Atiku for President\u2019.
\n\u201cThe report identified the page as a covert attempt to infiltrate Atiku\u2019s audience of potential voters and manipulate their views, gradually spamming them with antithetical content and diverting them to the \u2018Make Nigeria Worse\u2019 page.\u201d
\nAccording to the report, several of the removed pages attempted to defame candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party.
\nIt said one page with artificially amplified audience engagement, called \u201cRivers Violence Watch,\u201d pumped out political propaganda while posing as a neutral monitor of election violence, using the page description to mask its efforts.
\nMost of the pages claimed to be run by local Nigerian users, but in fact, were managed from Israel.
\nIt said fake news flooded Nigerians and played a central role in the recent national election.
\nThe accounts were also found to have been used in spreading rumors and promoting violence in an election which revealed Nigeria\u2019s fault lines along ethnic and religious divides.
\nDespite the overt political messaging of these inauthentic pages, the Digital Forensics lab could not assign a particular ideological motive to Archimedes\u2019 campaigns, given the diversity and scope of its general operations.
\nRather, the company, which poured over $800,000 into deceptive content over the past several years, appeared profit-driven. The report did not probe the origins of its cash flow, and it was not clear whether political actors in Nigeria or other countries where the campaigns took off had paid for the company\u2019s \u201cstrategic consulting.\u201d
\nFacebook has in the last year closed down over one billion accounts used in spreading fake news.
\nAtiku has dragged the Independent National Electoral Commission and the President to court, accusing them of stealing his victory at the poll. He claims the figures on INEC\u2019s servers show that he won the poll, but the results were doctored in favor of Buhari.
\nBy Sahara Reporters<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some accounts created by an Israeli firm named Archimedes has been closed by Facebook. The accounts, before their closure, were used purposely for disseminating smear campaigns against Atiku Abubakar, Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and eulogizing President Muhammadu Buhari. Many of the pages and accounts were discovered to be linked to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}