Series of accounts belonging to Ugandan government officials have been shut down by Facebook as the tech giant accused them of seeking to manipulate public debate ahead of elections Thursday, Facebook told AFP on Monday.
Uganda is holding presidential and parliamentary elections after a tense and bloody campaign, with President Yoweri Museveni, 76, facing an intense challenge from the popstar-turned-politician Bobi Wine, 38.
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Facebook’s head of communication for sub-Saharan Africa, Kezia Anim-Addo, said in an email “This month, we removed a network of accounts and pages in Uganda that engaged in CIB (Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour) to target public debate ahead of the election.”
“They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were.”
“Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network.” He said the network was linked to the ministry of information and communications technology.
Twitter, Instagram and Facebook permanently blocked US President Donald Trump following the January 6 Capitol events, a move his backers see as an assault on free speech.
Museveni’s senior press secretary Don Wanyama, whose accounts were among those shut both on Facebook and Instagram accused the company of seeking to influence the election.
“Shame on the foreign forces that think they can aid and plant a puppet leadership on Uganda by disabling online accounts of (ruling party) NRM supporters,” he said on Twitter.
Museveni’s has long accused foreign organisations and elements of backing Wine in a bid to remove his government. Although his online account is still active, many government officials and members of the ruling party have seen their pages taken down, including a well-known blogger and Museveni supporter, a prominent doctor and a senior official in the information ministry.
The term Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour was invented by Facebook, which describes it as when “groups of pages or people work together to mislead others about who they are or what they are doing”. The tech giant explains on its website that this is often linked to deceptive behaviour rather than content. Anim-Addo said over 100 such networks seeking to manipulate public debate have been removed worldwide since 2017.
By: Ifunanya Ikueze
