Meta removed a Croatian coordinated network consisting of 150 fake Facebook and Instagram profiles and pages, linked to the Croatian Democratic Union's (HDZ) Youth members, after Gong exposed and reported their daily support on HDZ's official Facebook page.
In the security report for the first quarter of 2024, Meta, one of the world's largest technology companies and the owner of Facebook and Instagram, states that Gong's research prompted them to independently investigate the case of fake profiles operating under the posts of the HDZ official Facebook page. In it, they determined that the detected fake profiles violated the community guidelines against coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is why they officially removed 150 profiles from these social networks. Also, although the persons who participated in the creation of the aforementioned fake profiles tried to conceal their identities, Meta established a link between such profiles and individuals connected to the HDZ organization Croatian Democratic Union Youth, whose president Maksimilijan Šimrak has recently become a member of Parliament.
Listing strategies and activities deployed by the removed fake profiles, the report highlights attempts to strengthen their support through mutually liking comments. They also found that such profiles try to present themselves more authentic by using AI photos of people for their profile pictures. Examples of fake profile activity include an individual who portrayed right-wing politicians as puppets of Orban and Putin, and an environmental activist who criticized the work of the Zagreb mayor.
We remind you that on February 20th, Gong discovered that the posts of the official Facebook page of the Croatian Democratic Union were commented on, liked and shared by a number of suspicious pages, such as Jerko Jere Kotarac, Tino Topić Top and Tomo Toky Marinković, which had a low number of followers, very similar creation dates, rare activity, little personal information and profile photos stolen from other people. These pages were active exclusively under HDZ posts, where they would like them and comment positively on HDZ, while criticizing and insulting the opposition, as well as citizens participating in the anti- HDZ protests. In the case of other political parties, we did not find fake profiles to any significant extent, as well as evidence of their coordinated activities, as is the case with HDZ's official Facebook page.
After being exposed, these fake profiles changed their names and profile photos the same evening, in order to continue their activities in a new guise. Thus, Jerko Jere Kotarac became Danijela Vrabelj, Tino Topić Top Suzana Modrić, and Tomo Toky Marinković transformed into Dario Marić. Meta pointed out this very fact, which we proved photographically by tracking the history of the name changes of these profiles, as the key reason why it decided to remove these profiles, because with this move the profiles in question consciously tried to avoid network sanctions against inauthentic content and behavior.
"The responsibility for suppressing such content should not be on citizens, who are expected to report individual suspicious profiles, but on the owners of digital platforms, who are responsible for the content on them according to the Digital Services Act. After all, the guidelines of the Digital Services Act for the Integrity of Elections show that bots and fake engagement are a problem in election campaigns, which recommend platforms to more effectively prevent fraud and the use of fake engagements and inauthentic profiles. Also, the responsibility must lie with parties and politicians, who should be prohibited from using fraudulent campaigns and manipulation of citizens," Matej Mikašinović-Komšo, Gong's digital security expert and the author of the analysis on fake profiles, pointed out.
