Romanians and Vietnamese run Facebook groups for Canadian Freedom Convoy protesters.
Protesters in the Canadian capital Ottawa. AOP
Facebook has removed groups of Freedom Convoy protesters against the Canadian government from its platform earlier this month. However, the reason was not conspiracy theories or extremist thinking, but the scammers behind the groups.
The Guardian says the founders of the groups even live as far as Vietnam or Romania. They use fake or hacked Facebook accounts to run groups. The motive is the financial gain from the political turmoil.
While Facebook has been working to prevent fraudulent activity on its platform since 2016, the financial gain from misinformation is global. The scammers exploit the movement related to conspiracy theories and the far right, targeting anti-vaccine protesters and QAnon followers, among others.
According to researchers, misinformation makes money in several ways. There are private companies in the world that advertise political propaganda for a fee or stand up for a certain idea. According to Facebook, 52 such networks of influencers were removed from the platform in 2021.
Another lucrative scam is fundraising on Facebook groups. In the case of the Freedom Convoy protests, the largest Facebook groups were run by scammers or various advocacy networks from several different countries. Although Facebook has eliminated the groups, their supporters have had time to raise more than $ 7 million in funding campaigns. GoFundMe ended the campaign later.
The London-based think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue researched how scammers make money on news sites, among other things. For example, every article on the far-right site of The US Military News asks for money to donate to the site.
However, according to researchers, the domain of the site is registered in Vietnam and it is unclear whether the products advertised on the site even exist. The researchers say the site belongs to a Vietnamese network that runs several similar fake sites.