Political leaders respond to revelations of Russian interference in favor of Petro Presidente’s campaign

Confidential Twitter documents declassified by order of the CEO of the aforementioned social network, Elon Musk, and famous American journalist Matthew C. Taibbi, editor pileshowed that the recent presidential campaign of Gustavo Petro would have strong support from Russia with false accounts, hashtags orchestrated and mentioned.

In a thread on the social network, published this Tuesday, Taibbi revealed some documents that reveal Russia’s unwarranted interference in public debate in Colombia. The files show trends and calculations that would have aided the electoral interests of the then presidential candidate of the historic charter and the current president.

The revelations sparked reactions on social networks from political leaders of various parties.

One of them was Senator Jota B. Hernandez, of the Green Coalition, who indicated that he was from Russia “They used bots for Gustavo Petro’s campaign.”

“Amazing!! Elon Musk himself, the owner of Twitter, validated and showed the world how Russia used BOTS for Gustavo Petro’s campaign! Using fake users, tabbed hashtags, and thousands upon thousands of mentions, they put the campaign on Twitter! #ZeroLineEthics“, He expressed.

For his part, former presidential candidate Enrique Gomez, director of the National Salvation Movement, confirmed that “Russian accounts certainly support and endorse everything related to Petro and the historic pact.”

“The scale is unbelievable, the damage these kinds of strategies are causing to democracies on the continent,” he added.

Meanwhile, Senator Paloma Valencia of the Democratic Center asked: “So Petro is supported by Russian Twitter accounts?”

Bot accounts

between accounts robots It was revealed, as revealed this Tuesday, @ysid70202528; @fernandohinca01; @willj84753699; @jaime528629; @nandras3; @esperanzaprie16; @cegatalisman2; @edwinpa81364652; and @alonso15922455.

between the hashtags #PactoHistorico, #PetroPresidente2022 and #PetroPresidenteColombia2022 revealed.

Twitter detected the unusual behavior of bots, in 2021, during routine monitoring, with special focus on Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia. For Twitter, this is coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

On social networks, various users have always complained and denounced massive attacks when they criticize the current president or the historic charter. This is what many have called the “warehouse” coordinated attack.

During the campaign, it was learned that Sebastian Guanumen, one of Petro’s digital strategy leaders, had given the order to “manage the moral line” to discredit the contenders. From the then candidate Petro. In this sense, digital narratives have been created in which lies, insults and slander are resorted to.