Nicaragua: Facebook shuts accounts with government ties

Facebook's parent company Meta said late on Monday that it had shut down a "troll farm" run by the government of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, who is running for re-election on Sunday.

Meta said they had deleted a network of 937 Facebook accounts, 140 pages, 34 groups, and 363 Instagram accounts operated by Ortega's government and his Sandinista party.

"This was one of the most cross-government troll operations we've disrupted to date, with multiple state entities participating in this activity at once," Meta said in a statement.

According to their report, the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and the Post (TELCOR), was responsible for the bulk of the fake content. "Smaller clusters of other fake accounts", Meta said, were run from a number of other official institutions including Nicaragua's Supreme Court.

The company said that the campaign also stretched to other platforms, such as Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube, and was largely concerned with promoting pro-government content and publishing false stories about the opposition.

What is the state of Nicaragua's democracy?

President Ortega is running for a fourth consecutive term on November 7. He has been in power since 2007, after having also run the country from 1979 to 1990.

Activists and opposition politicians have long argued that the country's elections are essentially a farce, as the ruling socialist party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, has spent years silencing any criticism. More than 30 politicians, business people,journalists and activists have been arrested since May, including seven presidential candidates.

Facebook's crackdown on the trolls in Nicaragua comes on the heels of several major scandals for the company, which include a major leak of internal documents as well as explosive whistleblower testimonyagainst the company. The tech giant was accused, among other things, of knowingly sowing discord with its algorithm and turning a blind eye to how their platforms are used to subvert democracy and promote violence.

es/msh (AP, dpa)