Anatomy of Pro-Trump Facebook Bots

Facebook has been in the news quite a bit lately. Russian meddling and that whole Cambridge Analytical thing, their stock isn’t doing so well lately. There is another big problem that doesn’t seem to be addressed much.

That’s Pro-Trump fake news bots. These bots don’t have the Russians to blame. Rather, these are folks, generally from Eastern European countries, but now it seems there are more folks coming in from places like the Philippines and India. The goal of these bots doesn’t seem to be about some foreign government trying to interfere in our election here, but rather, the goal seems to simply be to make money off of ad impressions. Unfortunately, many Trump supporters seem to easily fall for this.

I have tried several times to report these profiles to Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook always replies that they see nothing wrong with it. They seem to think my issue is with the content. They tell me they understand how someone who can disagree with me might make me mad, and then suggests I block them. That isn’t helpful. These bots are prolific and many. Facebook does nothing about them.

The bots are easy to spot, if you are willing to go waist deep into the bizarre realms of a Pro Trump Facebook group as I do.

I have masked the last name and faces of these posters, as it is is very possible these accounts may be stolen , or at the very least, the profile pictures and other pictures in the profile were stolen.

This example is a very easy one to spot.

Typical inflammatory fake story and a response from a gullible Trumpie.

This Marjan has a very foreign sounding name. Clicking on his profile reveals his hometown in Kumanavo, Macedonia. The website “ConservativeTown” is hosted by a company called “HostGator” according to a WhoIS lookup. As you can see from that link, they have opted to leave out the physical address of the content provider. Not that it is uncommon to hide that information, but we can already tell that site doesn’t exactly scream credibility.

Here is another example.

Profile links to a “fan Page” which links to websites they make profit off of.

Now Trumpies aren’t usually shy about wanting to arrest all Muslims-or worse. However, they seem to ignore the Islamic sounding name here. Note the number of shares. That’s exactly how they hope it will work.

This profile doesn’t list a hometown. However, looking at their “Check in History”, it reveals they like to go to places in and around Pristina, Kosovo.

How do they fall for this stuff? I mean really??

And yet another example. This person is from Quezon City, Philippines.

Not all bots are quite as obvious. Some claim to be from American Cities (beware of anyone who posts links from “Texas City, Texas or California City, California). These bots probably make up a majority percentage of posts to Pro Trump Facebook groups.

To be fair, I don’t belong to any left leaning groups. For all I know, they are filled with armies of fake liberal bots. The people behind this know that people can be quite gullible and prey on these people to make mad stacks of cash on clicks. I mean, it’s nice to know that folks from developing nations are doing okay for themselves, but still.

While the majority of responsibility falls upon people who don’t bother to fact check, Facebook has a huge problem with these bots and they seem unwilling to do anything about it. One would think with all the negative press coverage lately, they wouldn’t want more.