Young Activists Hold Activity-performances at GD Office

The young activists of 'It's A Shame' and 'Make A Change' movements hold an activity-performances at the central office of the ruling Georgian Dream Party today. 

Activists of 'It is a shame' youth movement brought a wreath to the office with ‘Cancelled, Cancelled’ reading on the lace that symbolized the detection and deletion of fake accounts by Facebook.

“Much money is spent on the creation and administration of these pages. This is a Russian practice with which Putin rules Russia and Bidzina Ivanishvili (Chairman of Georgian Dream) imported this practice from Russia,” claimed the participants of the activity.

The members of the 'Make A Change' movement wore masks and carried Panda toys that symbolized the detection and deletion of fake accounts.

Participants of the activity wanted to leave Panda toys in the party office, however, security guards did not allow them to enter the building. The youngsters left the toy outside the office.

Facebook has removed 39 accounts, 344 pages and 13 groups for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” in Georgia targeting domestic audiences. 

In a statement released on December 20, Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Facebook’s Security Policy, explained that the people behind this activity used fake accounts to increase engagement on their content and manage pages.

"These pages posed as news organizations and impersonated political parties, public figures, activist groups, and media entities”, Gleicher said.

"The page admins and account owners typically posted about domestic news and political issues such as elections, government policies, public officials, criticism of the opposition and local activist organizations”, he added.

Gleicher said that the Facebook team has identified these accounts through their investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region and their investigation benefited from public reporting.

"Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation linked this activity to Panda, an advertising agency in Georgia, and the Georgian Dream-led government", he said.

He further noted that the Facebook team is “constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity” because they don’t want their services to be used to manipulate people.

By Ana Dumbadze 

Related Story: FB Removes Georgian Web Content for ‘Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior'