analysis

Facebook groups created by a South African marketing company became breeding grounds for COVID-19 conspiracies and fear-mongering.

A Facebook page linked to Cape Town-based digital marketing firm Fangate (*) created at least 33 Facebook groups between January and March 2020 that leveraged fears around the novel coronavirus to build their respective audiences, a DFRLab investigation has found. Fangate's director subsequently used a separate but related entity called AppleBerry to exploit these fears and market non-medical face masks to the members of these groups.

Fangate's for-profit venture had an unintended consequence: in commercialising coronavirus-related fears of group members to market its product, it also created a platform for the propagation of misinformation. The Facebook groups quickly became vectors for the spread of coronavirus mis- and dis-information after the administrator seemingly abandoned them to volunteer moderators.

Parallel to the spread of the coronavirus itself, related disinformation and factually misleading information has propagated in a similar manner, quickly jumping around the globe. The World Health Organisation (WHO) referred to the spread of this information epidemic as an infodemic -- a public health crisis that has the potential to cause serious harm.

In response to the DFRLab investigation, Facebook took action against the companies...