Researcher: Facebook was manipulated in the EU elections

"It's very worrying that something like this can happen so many years after the scandals that caused Facebook to promise improvement," said Professor Trevor Davis, media scientist at George Washington University.

Following the disclosure of Russian influence in the 2016 US presidential election, including through Facebook, the company promised to tighten up its procedures to prevent such things. "We spend several billion dollars on safety and security every year," founder Mark Zuckerberg lamented. As late as the quarterly report at the end of July, he said that the recent elections in the EU showed that their efforts had succeeded.

But a study of what political activity looked like on Facebook in Germany at the EU elections, shows the opposite. Researchers at George Washington University's Media Studies Department found over 120,000 accounts with suspected fake profiles, which supported the right-wing Nationalist AfD.

- For example, over 20,000 accounts where first and last names consisted of two letters, and fake pictures. We found examples of local party sites where 40% of followers live more than 500 km away, for example in Nigeria, Kenya and the Philippines.

The method is based on the fact that the fake accounts should like and share AfD material, so that Facebook's system believes that the material is more popular than it really is. This is prioritized by Facebook's algorithms so that the posts appear more often in real users' news feeds.

- The party, which reached 10-15% in polls, had 85% of all Facebook shares. Five times more activity than all the other German parties together, Professor Davis notes.

The researchers cannot say who is behind the coup. They have spoken to the AfD and if their information on the number of employees who have worked with online campaigns and budgets is correct, then someone from outside is behind. Researchers estimate that it has cost at least € 1 million to buy all accounts and operate them properly.

What does this say about how Facebook has succeeded in its efforts?

- This shows, and it should worry all countries in the world, that Facebook's algorithm can be manipulated. Even in a political context.

But Facebook said they would be more vigilant against this after the 2016 US election?

- Yes, but the question to ask is: can we trust them?

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