The British newspaper the Guardian published yesterday a long investigation on Facebook and its handling of manipulative behavior on the social network, where Albania is mentioned as one of the countries where fake accounts were distorting political discourse. According to the Guardian, “the investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries.” A former data scientist at Facebook, Sophie Zhang, had filed “dozens of escalations within Facebook’s task management system to alert the threat intelligence team to networks of fake accounts or Pages that were distorting political discourse, including in Albania,” writes the Guardian.
In several cases, Facebook did not take any action to address inauthentic behavior after an employee flagged the case, according to the British newspaper. One of the examples given is again related to Albania. “A threat intelligence investigator found evidence that the Albanian network, which was mass-producing inauthentic comments, was linked to individuals in government, then dropped the case,” writes the Guardian.
The British newspaper writes that Facebook has “repeatedly failed to take timely action when presented with evidence of rampant manipulation and abuse of its tools by political leaders around the world,” and explains different ways through which the platform’s algorithm can be manipulated to “distort political debate,” including by creating fake engagement using Fb accounts which are not authentic or that have been compromised, that can be used to shape public perception over political parties or political leaders, and affect the news feed algorithm.
