The Facebook/WhatsApp stuff has me feeling like I'm stuck in an insanely boring Groundhog Day.

(short thread)

Me and @inigo_av interviewed Carlos Merlo, a fake news producer in Mexico, the week before their election in June. Not only had his operation been running for years. Merlo had been doing interviews bragging about

Here's Merlo in the NY Times in May bragging about his bot armies and spoofed local news pages. He saw himself as a local Cambridge

On June 28th, TWO DAYS before the Mexican election, DFR Lab releases a report about Merlo. Within a few hours of DFR Lab's research and our story going live, Facebook effectively wipes Merlo off their platform. They ban a huge chunk of his

Except Facebook knew about Merlo for 6 months. DFR Lab is part of The Atlantic Council, who are partnered with Facebook. Facebook told me that Merlo had been in their own internal election report and they knew DFR Lab had isolated him as a problem