Fake accounts in Kyrgyzstan are not as effective as they used to be a few years ago, but they are still in demand not only to support the image of politicians, but also to dictate the agenda and regulate the information space. As long as media literacy of people is low, and conformism to selection of opinion is a decisive factor, bot and troll farms will be very popular, experts say.
Groups of support
Journalist Ablai (not his real name) was approached by a candidate for deputy asking him for help 5 days before the end of the campaign at the election to Zhogorku Kenesh in November 2021. He was asked to create and share positive posts on his social media account.
The group of candidate support, according to the journalist, consisted of real users. A creative approach was welcomed – campaigners were to write posts on their own. Even if certain parameters were determined for the post, the text should be adapted to their own stylistics, to be recognisable. In addition to the fact that supporting posts were written openly and were subscribed to by real names, the group could accept only people known personally to the administrator, whom he could trust.
“I was offered to promote another party, but I refused because the second party member was a person who was indecent, in my opinion. If I agreed, I would compromise my reputation,” Ablai said.
Along with open support or harassment of public figures or political associations, the so-called bot or troll farms (fake accounts) have increasingly developed in social media in the last few years in Kyrgyzstan.
According to Asel Sooronbaeva, co-author of several journalistic investigations, employee of Factcheck.kg, activity of groups that spread fake information is being tracked down from 2015 and becomes increasingly intensive every year. In addition to the time of elections, when the activity of fake accounts is the highest, they work permanently to support the image and reputation of some politicians and to cast aspersions on their opponents.
“Analysis of our investigations shows that their number is increasing every year. Especially the so-called bot farms get active during elections, many of which we had in recent years,” Sooronbaeva said. “It happens despite the fact that Facebook constantly blocks such accounts on complaints of monitors.”
According to her, after the October 2020 election, Facebook deleted a few hundreds accounts, groups and pages, but in January and February new accounts were created because the election to the Bishkek City Kenesh was to be held in April 2021.
“In other words, these are the same people who work in PR companies that market themselves as such, where politicians hold their photo sessions and make videos. Such companies provide these services in a package – they promote anything you want in social media under fake accounts or verbally attack rivals,” she said.
Journalists of Factcheck.kg analysed 600 accounts of six most wealthy parties of 25 that took part in the 2020 election. They estimated dates of account registration; availability of own content, not reposts; real photos, not photos of others, nature, children or animals. According to the results, Yntymak party had ¾ of fake users. Emgek party had over a half of fake supporters, and 24 per cent – dubious ones, and only 16 per cent of real people. NDPK party had almost half of fake users who supported them.
Minimum risk, maximum profit
According to Torekul (not his real name), who worked during the 2020 election for one of pro-government parties, fake accounts have been actively used since 2018 as a tool of effective influence. Fake accounts, according to him, are usually opened via a SIM card or e-mail. The Kyrgyz segment usually uses photos and personal data of citizens of Kazakhstan and Yakutia. Then then just copy what happens on the original page of the user. The term of “bot and troll farms” does not mean that all those people work in the same place.
“It doesn’t matter as everyone has a mobile phone now,” Torekul said. “There’s the Facebook Lite app that provides access to a few accounts at the same time. It’s not difficult. You can do it via Yandex, Opera, Google on one computer. I don’t know about today, but then a user could earn up 500+ dollars for running a few accounts. It was the accord payment. Some were hired for a week, a month, others were hired for a long time. According to the assignment, one had to make, for example, 200 comments, 300 reposts. And confirming screenshots should be sent to your supervisors. It’s a lot of work.”
According to Torekul, the peak of activity among fake accounts, which was not surpassed, was in autumn 2019 after the journalistic investigation of corruption in the southern customs house and protests against Raim Matraimov.
“It was a strong burst of activity, now we don’t have such,” Torekul said. “Afterwards, they actively worked before the revolution, at the 2020 election. […] For example, journalists earn officially 15-20 thousand som (200-250 dollars). The best ones earn 500 dollars. And here’s the chance to open 10-20 accounts and earn good money. Moreover, no quality or data confirmation is needed, with minimum responsibility. Just like the tabloids. It was a unique chance for journalists, those who could, they used it.”
According to respondents, troll work is based on the following principle: even if Facebook blocks one of accounts because of suspicious activity, trolls switch to another, third, tenth account. When the tenth one is blocked, the first one becomes unblocked, and their activity does not stop virtually.
However, now bot farms, according to Torekul, pale into significance. They don’t have that impact they counted on.
“It used to be relevant, 200-300 comments under a post, and now quality matters,” Torekul said. “The society knows what a fake or troll is. If an account does not have a photo or it’s name say Georgy Kyrgyz, they know it’s not a real person, so they don’t trust their words. People now understand if that’s a bot, troll, or a real person.”
Up to date
Since this February, the information policy service of the President’s Office initiated an unprecedented project – heads of municipal bodies and press secretaries across the republic were trained to “Effective communications of state bodies.” The trainings on media literacy improvement were funded by the USAID as part of the project “Safe migration in Central Asia.”
“We are also planning to hold a range of events to unite media groups and organisations to improve interaction and awareness-raising about what the state does for its citizens,” the information policy service said.
Meanwhile, according to media expert Kubanychbek Taabaldiev, ex-director of KABAR news agency, the trainings held can be the sign of understanding the importance of social media and public opinon shaping and the attempt to start using their potential, which was never seen before.
“All press services and municipal chiefs have a task to hold more active work on raising awareness about the work of state bodies. Meanwhile, it might have nothing to do with the reality,” Taabaldiev said. “It will be all the same as in the case [with bots], but now it will look as official information and it will be more trusted, accordingly, as the initiators of this decision hope. However, it does not seem doubtful.”
“Nearly 90 state institutions and agencies are involved in this work,” Taabaldiev said. “In addition to press services, heads of sub-departments, departments, mid-level executives are also involved in this activity. In other words, a large layer of people who can work with social media can virtually fill all the information space with the information that needs to be distributed.”
According to official information, training of employees of state bodies, ministries and agencies was organised for prompt response to social media users, so that state bodies achieve the level of commercial companies that maintain good public relations.
“However, I have noticed that, for example, when press services write positive posts about senior executives, they are immediately responded with some unreally laudatory comments not from fake, but anonymous accounts, and we should differentiate between them. And there’s the impression that state bodies started working in this direction to hype artificially, and create positive image. I don’t leave out that the primary goal was exactly the same, when they organised it and trained state bodies,” Asel Sooronbaeva said.
The evolution of fake accounts, according to surveyed experts and respondents, is that they start to be on friendly terms with real people, journalists, activists. They upload photos that are processed in apps via artificial intelligence, invent new methods to be as much similar to real users as possible and not to be revealed. As long as it works and media literacy of people remains low, and dependence on the major opinion remains the decisive factor, fake factories will be popular, experts said.
Meanwhile, journalists have restricted resources to monitor fake information in the media space. The editorial staff of Factcheck,Kyrgyzstan, according to Sooronbaeva, consists of only four people, including herself. And there are nearly 700 thousand people vs. the army of civil servants.