For months now we’ve been watching seemingly ordinary individuals commenting on a Bitfinex related news post which was not actually getting any pageviews to the article itself.

The post made on the 4th of January was an article titled “Bitfinex Failed the Proof of Keys Test Says Trace Mayer.”

The article itself did not really receive that much attention, about 5,000 views. The post however somehow received more than 100 comments, all in support of Bitfinex in a highly exaggerated way.

Now finally someone has come out to say their account was hacked. Tricia Wands appears to be an ordinary Canadian who said today she did not make a comment, her account was hacked.

A lot more comments than usual were made today on this very peculiar Facebook post. Wands account commented at around 10AM London time, when she probably would have been asleep in Canada. Now that she woke up, she clarified the situation.

Hundreds more accounts must have been hacked as none of the comments appear to be genuine with many of these individuals seemingly not cryptonians at all:

Social media manipulation has been much talked about in recent years, but usually it was limited to paid astroturfing.

Now it appears hacking operations are being used to scale up manipulation to a very new level.

We asked Facebook for clarification, but they have not responded to our request for comments. Will update if that changes.

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