A cohort of troll accounts spread pro-government hashtags and targeted opposition figures on Twitter while participants in a private Telegram chat group, including Governor Ricardo Rosselló and several other Puerto Rican government officials, discussed similar campaigns, a DFRLab investigation has revealed.

After an anonymous source leaked the chat logs, protesters began demanding the governor’s resignation. On July 24, Rosselló announced that he will leave his post effective August 2, 2019.

The DFRLab cannot say with certainty that the chat participants directed the troll accounts; however, the timing and specificity with which the officials discussed the accounts’ actions within the chat suggest a degree of complicity. At worst, the chat logs show several Puerto Rican government officials organizing an information operation to boost pro-government messages and target opponents; at best, they show them actively endorsing such an operation.

After analyzing almost 900 pages of text messages, the DFRLab identified 12 cases in which the chat’s participants discussed specific actions on Twitter, either amplifying a message from the government or targeting opponents.

In most cases, the participants of the chat did not overtly mention the use of “trolls,” which are human-run social media accounts that display systematically abusive and aggressive behavior, often directed at other users. They instead referred to “our people” or “tweeters,” as well as, in one case, “unofficial accounts.”

Regardless of how the chat participants referred to these accounts, however, the DFRLab found that the accounts engaged in troll behavior. A group of the same 51 accounts — many of them trolls — were involved in at least six of the 12 planned campaigns. These accounts’ interactions with one another as well as other users suggested they belonged to a network that supported the government and targeted political opponents.

From Telegram to Twitter

The Telegram chat log was first published by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (Investigative Journalism Center) of Puerto Rico. The group said it received the documents from a source that requested to remain anonymous, but that it had verified the authenticity of the messages.

The chat had 12 participants in all; the leaked portion spanned a period from December 2018 to January 2019. The chat’s main objective appeared to be to monitor conversations in the media and on social media related to the Puerto Rican government.

The most damning evidence of coordination between the chat participants and a particular troll account appeared in the log on January, 13, 2019, after the president of the National Assembly in Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, was detained.

At 1:18 PM (Puerto Rico time; 12:18 EST) on that day, Ramón Rosario, the former Secretary of Public Affairs and Public Policy of the island, wrote: “Edwin [Miranda, founder of the marketing agency KOI], tell social networks to challenge Juan Dalmau and Yulín demanding that they repudiate Maduro, or they are accomplices.” At 1:25 PM, Edwin replied with “done.”

A mere three minutes later, at 1:28 PM (Puerto Rico time; 12:28 EST), the account @FuerzaDPueblo tweeted the following reply to the governor: “We challenge @CarmenYulinCruz and @juandalmauPR to express themselves against Maduro’s dictatorship or they are accomplices of these abuses, crimes, and oppression#democracy #Venezuela.”