Facebook removed a series of Spanish accounts — both genuine and inauthentic — that boosted messaging favorable to a conservative political party in Spain. Facebook took action after being alerted by Twitter, which found 259 inauthentic accounts connected to the party on its own platform.

On September 20, the company took down 65 Facebook and 35 Instagram accounts that it said were connected to Partido Popular (PP, or the People’s Party) for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior in violation of the platform’s rules.

Independent analysis conducted by the DFRLab found that some of the individuals who had their accounts removed worked for the PP or for local governments controlled by the party.

Meanwhile, fake accounts used stock pictures stolen from the internet to create the impression that they belonged to real users. While most of the accounts did not share political content, a portion did.

The removal of the accounts occurred amid political instability in Spain. In the country’s April general elections, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchéz and his center-left PSOE (“Socialist Workers’ Party of Spain”) won the most seats but failed to gain an outright majority of votes, which would have allowed it to govern by itself. PSOE then failed to form a coalition, and, as such, Spain is thus headed for a new vote in November.

Real accounts, inauthentic behavior

Some of the accounts in the dataset were overtly connected to the PP.

One user, Lorenzo Perez Red, stated he worked for the party’s communications team and shared a photo of himself at a party event. His Facebook account also noted that he was a councilman in the municipality of Soto del Real in Madrid. His name was not on the municipality’s official website at the time of the takedown, but he was listed as a councilman in documents on the website until the beginning of 2019, which means he will likely finish his term also in 2019.