Facebook links with U.S. spies to interfere in Nicaraguan election

November 9, 2021 7:12 AM

Less than a week before Nicaragua’s presidential election, social media giant Facebook deleted the accounts of hundreds of the country’s top news outlets, journalists and activists, all of whom supported the ruling left-wing Sandinista government. Worse still, after dozens of Sandinistas took to Twitter to record video messages proving they were real people being censored, their accounts were systematically deleted as well, in what Managua-based journalist Ben Norton described as a Silicon Valley “double-tap strike.”

Perhaps even more worrying from a freedom-of-speech viewpoint is who made the decision at Facebook. The 11-page report detailing the company’s supposed evidence of inauthentic behavior has just two contributors: Luis Fernando Alonso and Ben Nimmo, individuals with deep and long-lasting ties to Western military intelligence. According to his biography on LinkedIn, Alonso was, until last year, working for Booz Allen Hamilton, a shadowy corporation situated in the area around Washington, D.C. colloquially known as “Raytheon Acres.” The national security state farms out much of its most controversial work to the firm, which is technically a private company (and therefore not subject to the same oversight and scrutiny as public agencies). Edward Snowden, for instance, actually worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, not the NSA. Before that, Alonso directly worked for the government at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, a Department of Defense-controlled institution that trains top military and intelligence leaders.

posted by 445supermag (13 comments total)

Funny, for the last eight years I've been non-stop told that America doesn't meddle in foreign elections because only bad countries like Russia do that.

This is why a large chunk of the US no longer trusts our own media, because a large chunk of us know and have known that certain subjects in US media are generally always propaganda.

It's too bad this dark reality sent millions down conspiracy theory rabbit holes.
posted by deadaluspark at 7:20 AM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

Just the other day I was reading about the Dulles brothers:

They were able to succeed [at regime change] in Iran and Guatemala because those were democratic societies, they were open societies. They had free press; there were all kinds of independent organizations; there were professional groups; there were labor unions; there were student groups; there were religious organizations. When you have an open society, it's very easy for covert operatives to penetrate that society and corrupt it.

Actually, one of the people who happened to be in Guatemala at the time of the coup there was the young Argentine physician Che Guevara. Later on, Che Guevara made his way to Mexico and met Fidel Castro. Castro asked him, "What happened in Guatemala?" He was fascinated; they spent long hours talking about it, and Che Guevara reported to him ... "The CIA was able to succeed because this was an open society." It was at that moment that they decided, "If we take over in Cuba, we can't allow democracy. We have to have a dictatorship. No free press, no independent organizations, because otherwise the CIA will come in and overthrow us."

...which is a fucking tragedy. Nobody's choices should be between an American-backed dictatorship and an anti-American dictatorship.
posted by clawsoon at 7:28 AM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

Man this is a fucked up situation. On one hand, oligarchical control of media with ties to right wing capital is super fucked.

On the other, Ortgega's govt - the "sandanistas" (I put in air quotes, because, like many revolutionaries, the resultant power grab completely betrays the revolution)...... is really trying hard for that "relentless oppression award"

Source: Since taking office in 2007, the government of President Daniel Ortega has dismantled nearly all institutional checks on presidential power HRW

Nicaragua’s human rights crisis continued throughout 2020, as did the authorities’ strategy of repressing dissent. Amnesty
posted by lalochezia at 7:29 AM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Some recent context on Nicaraguan politics: Ortega poised to retain Nicaraguan presidency after crackdown on rivals (Guardian)

Nicaragua’s authoritarian leaders, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, are poised to extend their rule over the crisis-hit Central America country with an election that opponents and much of the international community have denounced as a charade. ...

Seven presidential contenders have been thrown in jail or placed under house arrest since May, while other leading critics have fled to Costa Rica, the US and Europe, and foreign journalists have been barred from the country.

In recent weeks, reporters from CNN, Le Monde, New York Times, NPR, Washington Post and the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo have all been prevented from entering Nicaragua to witness proceedings.

It's a mess all around, the story is much bigger than Facebook.
posted by Nelson at 7:30 AM on November 9, 2021 [7 favorites]

The Ortega regime really are a bunch of bastards who just stole an election, so it's hard to muster that much sympathy...
posted by BungaDunga at 7:32 AM on November 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

(anyway I am skeptical of any source who's top stories on the front page are "White House, CNN Work With Sesame Street to Shill Covid Vax to Kids" and "Aaron Rodgers Destroys Both Parties, Champions Bodily Autonomy, Becomes Un-Cancelable")
posted by BungaDunga at 7:34 AM on November 9, 2021 [13 favorites]

Is Daniel Ortega left wing? I thought he had turned to the Right in his old age.
posted by Bee'sWing at 7:45 AM on November 9, 2021

Man. A quick perusal of the front-page headlines on that site does not inspire confidence. It is a stream of crazy right-wing bullshit and conspiracy theories. This looks a lot like the crap on Russian propaganda sites my 75-year old dad has become addicted to since he got a smart phone.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:47 AM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

I'd love to read a leftist take on this election without having to pry a lot of grayzone barnacles off first.
posted by mittens at 7:52 AM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

One weird thing about this piece is that it implies that if the accounts were run by real people, they can't have been engaged in "coordinated inauthentic behavior." That's never been true, by Facebook's standards. Inauthentic behavior is stuff like brigading, you don't need actual bots to do that. I'm sure a lot of the accounts were run by real people... so were the Russian troll farm accounts. Doesn't mean they weren't engaged in the sort of behavior Facebook occasionally decides to shut down.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:54 AM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

The Washington Post has a different slant on the story

The accounts removed were largely aimed at domestic audiences and had ties to the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front and Ortega’s government, which has been engaged for months in a crackdown on opponents and dissent...

This network was an example of a ‘troll farm’ — a coordinated effort by co-located operators to corrupt or manipulate public discourse by using fake accounts to build personas across platforms and mislead people about who’s behind them,” according to the Meta Platforms report.

The report said the network’s activity began in April 2018, when the accounts started spreading misinformation and discrediting students who were leading nationwide demonstrations against the government. In 2020, the activity shifted from discrediting protesters and the opposition to amplifying the accounts and posting pro-government content...

Ortega is pursuing a fourth consecutive term in the Sunday election. International observers have criticized his government for the clampdown on the opposition, which has led to arrests and prompted prominent dissidents to flee the country.


A June report by Human Rights Watch detailing the number of arrests by the government concluded that it appeared “to be part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent, instill fear, and restrict political participation.”...
posted by LindsayIrene at 8:20 AM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

The framing that “Facebook is full of spies” seems a bit off here. It implies that the US government has secretly ordered active agents employed by Facebook to take action. But there’s no evidence of this at all, just a very porous boundary between the security state and a tech company, and a number of icky decisions. There’s no smoking gun. The full Mint article is certainly an interesting read though!
posted by Going To Maine at 8:29 AM on November 9, 2021

Mod note: Deleting this thread because the main source isn't the best in terms of being reliable, happy to try the thread again with a better source next time.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:34 AM on November 9, 2021