After Gong exposed that the ruling party is using a multitude of bots on its official Facebook page to artificially support the insults against the opposition and protesters, HDZ did not delete the bots, but instead changed their names and profile pictures to continue their activities in a new disguise.
The ruling party is not ceasing to manipulate citizens using bots on Facebook in the super election year, aiming to create an illusion of broader support and thereby deceive the public. After several media outlets (including Nacional, Index, Telegram, N1, Dnevnik.hr) reported Gong's findings on February 20th, HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) decided to cover the traces of their bots on the same day. However, they were not very successful in doing so, as we easily exposed them, as shown in the continuation of Gong's analysis.
For greater transparency, Facebook records every occasion in which a page changes its name. Therefore, even if the name and profile picture of a page change, and even if the activities of the page are hidden, clicking on the "About" section, then clicking on the "Page Transparency" subsection, and finally clicking "See More" provides insight into the history of all significant changes made to the page's information.
Using this method, we determined that after exposing it as an HDZ bot, Jerko Jere Kotarac became Danijela Vrabelj. We also found that Tino Topić Top continues to exist as Suzana Modrić, Tomo Toky Marinković transformed into Darija Marić, Tomislav Tomo Raos renamed himself as Tomislav Radoš, Ante Matić became Mate Anić, while the page Hrvatski Sokol was renamed to Sinovi ravnice. These name changes are visible below:
In the end, out of the 30 observed bot profiles, 15 changed their names, while 18 changed their profile pictures. We searched for the new profile pictures of these bot profiles (pages) using the Google Image Search option, and we found that only two out of the 18 bots with changed profile pictures use original photos. The remaining 16 have taken their new profile pictures from various internet sources, some of which date back several years ago. For instance, the profile picture of the page Mate Anić (formerly Ante Matić) now features a flute taken directly from the catalog of Školska knjiga, while the page Zorica Petković (formerly Mila Staničić) borrowed a photograph of Plitvice Lakes from the official website of the Croatian National Tourist Board, Croatia.hr. Additionally, Martin Filipović (now Filip Martinović Fićo), moved on from stealing a photo of a semi-naked man, to appropriating official photos from Royal Dutch Airlines, taken from an article advising travelers on the landmarks of Zagreb.
All these changes to the pages can be observed through the attached evidence:
Although these bot profiles have stopped commenting under HDZ's posts since we exposed them, they continue to like them, as evident in HDZ's post published on February 20th at 20:54:
All of this indicates that HDZ will continue to use these Vučić-style methods during the super-election year. At Gong, we consider this to be an unethical and non-transparent political campaign and manipulation of the public, which persists despite being exposed. The problematic nature of its implementation lies in the fact that citizens can easily gain a false impression of the massiveness of support for certain ideas and views through the consumption of social media content. Therefore, HDZ continues to employ astroturfing, creating the illusion of spontaneous and natural support for a political party and thereby attempting to attract voter support.
