A Miami-based digital marketing firm has been behind a series of covert political-influencing operations in Latin America over the past year, Facebook owner Meta said this week in a rare display of apparent U.S.-based disinformation gear
Predictvia, registered as a Florida company, says on its website that it is on the “front lines of the fight against disinformation” and is fighting “coordinated efforts to manipulate public discourse.”
Meta-analysts did show, however, that Predictvia ran a network of fake accounts — four on Instagram and 24 on Facebook, along with 54 Facebook pages — posing as media outlets, journalists and lifestyle brands. .
Reports have published criticism of the mayor of the Guatemalan city of San Juan Sacatepéquez, Juan Carlos Pellecer, and in Honduras they have focused on alleged political corruption and criticism of the president of Congress, Luis Redondo. None of the politicians responded to a request for comment.
Predictvia also carried out extensive information operations seeking to meddle in politics in Honduras and Guatemala on Twitter, two former Twitter employees who requested anonymity told Reuters. The extent of the company’s activity on Twitter has not previously been disclosed. Twitter has not responded to requests for comment on this story.
“It’s a classic pattern that you tend to see in contract influence operations,” said Ben Nimmo, Global Threat Intelligence Lead at Meta. “There’s not a single narrative that they’re pushing in different countries; it tends to be much more personalized by country.”
Predictvia Chief Executive Ernesto Olivo Valverde and other senior company officials did not respond to Reuters’ multiple requests for comment.
Reuters was unable to determine who Predictvia worked for or gauge the success of its disinformation efforts.
Meta said it had banned Predictvia — which operates in both Venezuela and the United States — from its services and sent a termination letter.
Government officials in Honduras and Guatemala did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the alleged disinformation operation against politicians in their countries.
Meta says it regularly takes down disinformation operations to maintain the integrity of its platform. He said in his report that the Predictvia investigation was triggered by questions from Reuters earlier this year.
About 6,700 accounts followed one or more Facebook pages in Predictvia’s influencer network and had 400 Instagram followers, according to Meta.
The Predictvia network also included other social media platforms, Meta said. Her analysts found two Twitter accounts linked to the company, one of which describes itself online as a civilian organization seeking to post “real content” ahead of Guatemala’s national elections in June. Both were active until Tuesday.
Last year, Twitter staffers traced thousands of fake accounts on its platform for a small number of Predictvia employees, former Twitter employees, who said they were involved in the investigation, they told Reuters.
“I was surprised that they were basically doing everything themselves,” said one of the employees. “Only the range was quite significant.”
Three former Twitter employees told Reuters that Twitter handed over its fake account data last August to a Latin American non-profit research group called Cazadores de Fake News. The datasets provided to Cazadores by Twitter do not mention Predictvia, the former employees said.
Source: Terra
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