Another army of bots and trolls “deciphered” - fake pages created for the 2020 elections

The two-month study conducted by the non-governmental organization "International Society for Fair Elections " showed that the "The Main News", "Tbilisi Info", "Tbilisi Today", "Georgia Daily", "Interpress", "Tbilisi 24", "Seven Days", "Read it", "Newsletter", "The Art", "Hot News", "Faktpress" and "Pressnet" are the Facebook pages of the false media agencies that spread the lies.

Fake media pages actively shared in 35 groups. The dissemination process is also performed by the fake Facebook users and pages. A total of up to five million people in these groups have been exposed to deliberate lies. The content of the disseminated information is mainly political and is aimed at discrediting the opposition.

The Head of Fair Elections says that the infrastructure for spreading fake information was created specifically for the 2020 elections.  11 out of 14 fake media outlets were founded on the same day, May 27 of the last year.

It was discovered that a new generation of trolls and bots were using the deceased people's identities  to interact with thousands of people.

The opposition is convinced that the government is behind this  organized and managed process, both ideologically and financially.

Koka Kandiashvili and Shalva Ramishvili are not mentioned anywhere in the study of the  Fair Elections, but one of the creators of these pages is a former journalist of Kandiashvili’s media company Espersona (“This Person”). The key witness for the prosecution against Nika Melia is currently the editor-in-chief of the Main News and is trying to discredit the opposition in  his new position.

Kandiashvili False Agency also informed the target audience that Enzel Mkoyan, who shot at a political opponent, was a member of the National Movement.In fact, everyone knows that now Mkoyan represents the Georgian Dream.

In parallel with the Facebook pages, there are 14 of their websites and the same number of YouTube channels, which were also created in the same period of time.

The author of the study, the "Fair Elections," has already appealed to the Facebook administration to respond to organized fraud.