During the protests against the Russian Law on so-called agents, Georgian Dream was supported by a network of Russian-coordinated inauthentic behavior on the social network Facebook, according to a report by Meta Corporation.
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In the second quarter of the year, Meta deleted 76 Facebook accounts, 30 pages, and 11 Instagram accounts for violating its policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Based on the report, the Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) network originated in Russia and targeted Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The operation focused on fictitious news websites that continue to operate today, publishing "news" about politics in Georgian, Russian, Azerbaijani, and Armenian.
“In Georgia, they posted about the most recent protests against the “foreign agent law” where they criticized the protesters and supported the ruling party, Georgian Dream.
In Azerbaijan, they posted about local events and criticized the West. In Armenia, they posted about politics, including supportive commentary about Russia, a former Armenian official currently detained in Azerbaijan, and criticism of the Prime Minister of Armenia," the report states.
The people behind this network used fake accounts to drive traffic to websites, manage pages, and publish content. Some of the accounts were discovered and canceled by an automated system prior to Meta's investigation.
"Although the people behind the CIB network attempted to conceal their identity and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with a Moscow-registered marketing firm called IMA Digital," the report noted.
The network spent approximately $77 000 on advertising, according to the document.
Meta defines coordinated inauthentic behavior as a coordinated effort to manipulate public debate to achieve a strategic goal, with fake accounts playing a central role. Individuals coordinate with each other and use fake accounts to mislead others about who they are and what they are doing.
