“We could see that there were employees of these offices engaged,”
Gleicher added that some of the content posted by the accounts had already been taken down for community standards violations, including hate speech.
There was no comment from Brazil’s presidential office about Facebook’s action.
Facebook’s decision comes as Brazil’s president careens from crisis to crisis, with different investigations drawing close to him, his family and allies. Bolsonaro has faced growing political isolation since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has also affected his popularity.
He frequently denounces the media for undermining his administration, and often opts to speak directly to his supporters -- whether on Facebook or in person, as they livestream his comments to their followers.
Brazil’s Supreme Court is investigating a network of Bolsonaro supporters who have targeted justices, politicians and the media. Some of them were jailed in June and early July as the investigations moved forward. The country’s top electoral court is also looking into the accusation that the president’s 2018 campaign has illegally financed the spread of false news online.
Gleicher said in a statement that 73 Facebook and Instagram accounts, 14 pages and one group were removed. About 883,000 accounts followed one or more of the Bolsonaro-linked pages and an additional 917,000 followed one of more of the Instagram accounts that were removed.
“This network consisted of several clusters of connected activity that relied on a combination of duplicate and fake accounts — some of which had been detected and disabled by our automated systems — to evade enforcement, create fictitious personas posing as reporters, post content, and manage pages masquerading as news outlets,” Gleicher said in the statement.
He said the accounts were linked to the
It said the only operator of the accounts that is directly employed by the presidency is
Bolsonaro’s allies have previously been accused by adversaries of running information operations, but this is the first time their staffers have been connected to inauthentic accounts,
“This network steered a significant and longstanding operation, stretching back to at least the 2018 presidential campaign and having amassed an audience of millions, that fused political spin and disinformation with targeted online harassment,” the research firm said.
The Social Liberal Party’s spokesperson
Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro said in a statement that “it is impossible to evaluate what kind of profile was banned and if the platform crossed or not the limits of censorship.” Lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro did not comment.
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