African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

Header Banner

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
Africa InsidersPoliticsSociety

Insiders Insight: Facebook busts Israeli fake news firm targeting Africa

By Africa Insiders
May 21, 2019
1541
0
Share:

African Arguments is and always will be freely-accessible to everyone.

But we also have a separate spin-off product called the Africa Insiders Newsletter. It consists of weekly emails with additional snappy insights on topics such as elections, conflict, health and more. It’s for those who want a bit extra and comes with a small subscription fee:

  • Regular: $10/month or $100/year
  • Patron: $15/month or $150/year. The extra 50% goes straight to funding African Arguments.
  • Student/limited income: $2/month or $20/year.

The profits from the newsletter go into funding African Arguments’ free content.

Click here to SUBSCRIBE.


Table of contents:

  • The follow-up
    • Start and stop negotiations in Sudan
  • What we are talking about
    • Facebook busts Israeli fake news firm targeting Africa
    • Why do governments keep banning social media?
  • Health Corner
    • Global health’s big week
  • Hear this word
    • Sexual harassment goes unpunished in African Union
  • Conflict focus/Report of the week
    • The Islamic State in (West) Africa
  • What else?
    • If you have time, read these!

Click here to SUBSCRIBE.


Free segment: What we are talking about

265 fake accounts, 3 million real followers…

The essentials: Facebook announced it has removed hundreds of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts operated by Israeli political marketing firm, Archimedes Group. Archimedes targeted countries in Africa but has also focused its campaigns on some countries in Latin America and South East Asia. Facebook says Archimedes operated and used fake accounts to publish political news particularly related to elections.

The context: Nigeria, Senegal, Togo and Algeria are only four of at least 13 countries Facebook says were the targets of coordinated social media attacks by Archimedes Group. Facebook investigated and removed 265 accounts involved in inauthentic and manipulative activity. The Archimedes-linked accounts had a combined following of almost 3 million people. These accounts posed as local news organisations or fact checkers to post mainly about elections. Archimedes spent over $800,000 on ads and published defamatory information about election candidates.

Among others, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab investigated activities targeting Atiku Abubakar, the main opposition candidate in Nigeria’s elections this February. DFRLab, which was alerted to the suspicious activities by Facebook before the sweep, said the fake accounts made gross mistakes that showed the operators lacked local knowledge.

The operators of Archimedes Group are unknown but the company has been linked to controversial Israeli advert agency, Grey Content. The accounts were run from locations other than the countries their operators claimed to be from. Some were run from Israel, UK and Portugal.

The good: Facebook not only conducted a sweeping take-down of the fake accounts targeting African elections, but it also banned Archimedes Group from using its platforms. It has also vowed to keep removing threats. That’s positive news for countries with elections coming up. Disinformation on social media escalated tensions during the Nigerian elections, as I witnessed personally, with things turning violent in some places. There need not be a repeat of this in other African countries.

The bad: Information warfare is now being waged on a massive, commercial scale and social media is the battlefield. African countries are easy to pick on because they lack developed digital landscapes and advanced media literacy levels. Facebook is under pressure and has so far shown no great success in keeping the site clean. Whatsapp, a division of Facebook, and Facebook Messenger are the most popular messaging applications on the continent meaning millions across Africa are susceptible to rumours and the spreading of fake news.

The future: Facebook says Archimedes’ deceptive activity dates back to 2012. It’s not clear how effective the company’s political campaigns were, but what is clear is that Facebook was unable to stop the campaigns when it mattered. We may never know just how much damage was caused. Facebook is a necessary means of communication and information for many users in African countries and will likely remain so regardless of its vulnerabilities. The company must develop more effective techniques to keep its platforms safe for users on the continent.

  • Primary Source: Removing coordinated inauthentic behaviour from Israel (Facebook)
  • Inauthentic Israeli Facebook assets target the world (DFRLab)
  • Facebook says Israeli company used fake accounts to target African elections (CNN)
  • Facebook busts Israeli campaign to disrupt elections in African, Asian and Latin American nations (Haaretz)
  • Who is behind Israel’s Archimedes Group, banned by Facebook for election fakery? (The Israeli Times)
  • Video: How attackers used Whatsapp vulnerability to spy on phones (FT)

Discuss with @Shollytupe on Twitter

Click here to SUBSCRIBE.

The Africa Insiders’ Newsletter is a collaboration between AfricanArguments.org and @PeterDoerrie, with contributions from @_andrew_green, @shollytupe, and assistance from Stella Nantongo. Part of the subscription revenue is funding in-depth and freely accessible reporting and analysis on African Arguments.

Previous Article

Ethiopia: The challenge to the TPLF…from Tigray’s ...

Next Article

When international NGOs try to “help” local ...

mm

Africa Insiders

The Africa Insiders Newsletter is a weekly newsletter brought to you by African Arguments. Written by leading journalists and analysts, it it made up of snappy, insightful updates on the major developments that have hit the week's headlines, and those that should've.

Leave a reply Cancel reply

  • Politics

    Shame and Violence: Insight from Complex Emergencies

  • Politics

    Africa and the EU: Africa APPG report on trip to Brussels

  • ActivismAfrican VoicesAge of Agitation SeriesCovid-19COVID-19Debating IdeasIdentities

    Covid-19 in Africa: Youth at the Fore

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81664
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Popular articles

  • Donated breast milk in a refrigerator at St Francis Hospital Nsambya in Kampala, Uganda. In November, the hospital launched the country’s first breast milk bank. Credit: Patricia Lindrio/GPJ.

    Saving lives and broken hearts with breast milk in Uganda

  • Dr Kanda at the Lwano mobile screening camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Credit: Xavier Vahed-DNDi.

    Africa-led progress on neglected tropical diseases needs boost in Kigali

  • Evangelista Kanohili sits outside her home in Sheema, Uganda, March 15, 2022. Kanohili has been experiencing on-and-off infestations of jiggers, a small parasitic flea that burrows into the skin and can make it too painful to take care of daily tasks. Credit: Apophia Agiresaasi/Global Press Journal.

    Uganda: The tiny flea making it painful for people to walk and work

  • “Too much propaganda”: Zimbabwe’s pirates of the airwaves look to SA

  • Tunisia's President Kais Saied meeting with then US Defense Secretary Mark Esper at Carthage Palace, Tunisia, in September 2020. Credit: DoD/Lisa Ferdinando.

    Is Tunisia’s democracy slipping away?

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
Cleantalk Pixel
By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
African Arguments wants to hear from you!

Take 5 minutes to fill in this short reader survey and you could win three African Arguments books of your choice…as well as our eternal gratitude.