Twitter released a dataset containing a network of 3,104 accounts originating from Honduras after determining that the accounts were accessing Twitter from a single IP range. According to Twitter, ‘a staffer created the fake accounts’ on the behalf of the Honduras Government and the network amplified Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado (often referred to as JOH)—his account was the most retweeted by the network. Account creation and account activity in the network scaled up in 2019, and activity often focused on issues relating to JOH, who was facing a number of political challenges. On 19 October 2019, for example, his brother, Juan Antonio Hernández, was convicted of drug trafficking charges, which also implicated JOH and other family members. Some accounts in the network shared a video link to JOH’s live press conference concerning the allegations. There was also evidence of spam accounts being used by the network, as well as follow-for-follow tactics to expand reach. For example, the second most followed account (24,057 followers) appeared to be an account helping people grow their Twitter following (its profile description text was ‘follow me and I’ll follow you’). Facebook announced in 2019 that it had also removed accounts and pages that amplified positive content about the President. It found that ‘some of this activity was linked to individuals managing social media for the government of Honduras’.
