Behind the Screen: The Use of Facebook Accounts With Inauthentic Behavior During European Elections

Technology has reshaped political communication, allowing fake engagement to drive real influence in the democratic process. Hyperactive social media users, who are over-proportionally active in relation to the mean, are the new political activists, spreading partisan content at scale on social media platforms. Using The Authenticity Matrix tool, this study revealed Facebook accounts of hyperactive users exhibiting inauthentic behaviour that were used during the electoral campaign (May 10, 2024, to June 8, 2024) for the 2024 election of Romanian members of the European Parliament. The results indicate that, for some posts, up to 45% of shares were made by hyperactive users (four or more shares per post by the same account) and 33.9% by super-active users (10 or more times). This type of online behavior is considered by Meta as manipulation of “public opinion,” “political discussion,” and “public debate,” and Meta’s Community Standards is committed to preventing such behavior in the context of elections. Another key contribution of this research is the identification of dominant characteristics of hyperactive user accounts, using information publicly available on their social media profile, which provides insights into their specific features and helps users better identify them on social media. The article highlights that online social network platforms condemn these manipulative practices in theory, but they don’t take sufficient measures to effectively reduce them in order to limit their impact on our societies.