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Kostas Zafeiropoulos | Bitola, Skopje, Athens | BIRN<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Date of publication: 26\/12\/2019<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_fullwidth_header][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#F7F9FC” background_color_gradient_end=”#ffffff” custom_padding=”2px|||||” bottom_divider_style=”mountains2″ bottom_divider_color=”#e5e3e0″ bottom_divider_height=”356px” prev_background_color=”#ffffff” next_background_color=”#e5e3e0″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”30px||-40px||false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″ hover_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ locked=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n As the sun dipped over the rooftops of the North Macedonia town of Bitola near the southern border with Greece, the man they call \u201cCheese<\/b>\u201d sipped a beer on the Sirok Sokak pedestrian strip.<\/p>\n As sundowns go, this one seemed fitting. It was August 12, the day North Macedonia outlawed the use of the Vergina Sun \u2014 a Greek national symbol \u2014 in books, on monuments and in public spaces.\u00a0For Cheese, the ban on \u201cappropriation\u201d of the Classical Hellenic emblem with its distinctive pointy rays was the latest act of surrender in a bitter fight over Macedonian identity.<\/p>\n It was part of a historic deal with Greece to end a 30-year dispute over his country\u2019s use of the name \u201cMacedonia<\/b>\u201d \u2014 which Athens argued implied territorial ambitions over a northern Greek province of the same name and its ancient legacy of Alexander the Great.\u00a0Under the deal signed in July 2018, the former Yugoslav republic had to change maps and textbooks, abandon all use of the Vergina Sun and \u2014 the ultimate betrayal, in Cheese\u2019s view \u2014 rechristen itself \u201cNorth Macedonia\u201d.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_toggle title=”Read More” _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n Sitting in an outdoor cafe as dusk descended, he vowed never to sully his lips with the new name.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a patriot, and I just don\u2019t want my country\u2019s name to be changed,\u201d he told BIRN.\u00a0Few people know Cheese\u2019s true identity, though many are familiar with his nationalist views. He is, in fact,\u00a0<\/span>Goran Kostovski<\/b>, a 38-year-old marketing company worker from the capital, Skopje.\u00a0With almost 10,000 Twitter followers on three continents, Kostovski led a social media campaign in 2018 urging Macedonians to boycott a referendum on implementing the name-change deal, known as the Prespa agreement after the lake near which it was signed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p> While the Prespa deal promised to unblock Greek opposition to the country\u2019s hopes of joining NATO and the EU, critics saw it as a compromise too far. They hoped a low turnout in the September 2018 referendum would invalidate the result.<\/p>\n \u201cIt made no sense to tell the world to vote no in the referendum because we feared the government would distort the results,\u201d Kostovski said. \u201cWe had to boycott the referendum first.\u201d<\/p>\n Prompting street protests at home and drumming up diaspora dollars abroad, the \u201c#boycott<\/b>\u201d campaign was a runaway success.\u00a0While 95 per cent of those who voted in the referendum were in favour of the name-change deal, turnout was only 37 per cent \u2014 well short of the 50 per cent minimum threshold.\u00a0Though parliament later ratified the Prespa agreement anyway, experts say the victory for voter suppression was due in part to a new type of information warfare increasingly seen in nationalist circles.<\/p>\n Known as \u201ccomputation propaganda\u201d, it is what the\u00a0Oxford Internet Institute<\/a>\u00a0at Oxford University calls \u201cthe interaction of algorithms, automation and politics\u201d.<\/p>\n Few have mastered the art better than Kostovski, though he is cagey about the methods he uses.\u00a0\u201cYou can say we\u2019re\u00a0<\/span>bots<\/b>, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s true,\u201d he said, referring to the new foot soldiers of the online propaganda war: bogus Twitter accounts programmed to behave like humans.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve blurred your thinking so you don\u2019t know where our campaign is coming from, and you don\u2019t know where to look first.\u201d<\/p>\n While much has been said of Balkan troll farms and fake news factories, less is known about the impact of computational propaganda on the workings of democracy in the region.\u00a0A\u00a0<\/span>BIRN investigation<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>into nationalist networks on both sides of the name dispute lifts the lid on the online tricks employed to amplify political messages and distort public opinion.<\/p>\n It is a journey into an underworld of computer code and conspiracy theories, where \u201cghost users\u201d and \u201cTwitterbots\u201d meet far-right extremism in a digital hall of mirrors.\u00a0As much fake buzz as fake news, the activity is designed to create the false impression of a giant online conversation so opinion-makers such as journalists and activists sit up and take notice.<\/p>\n In this way, experts say a small group of geeks with laptops can exert an influence way out of whack with their actual numbers, with worrying implications for democratic discourse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_toggle][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ background_color=”#e5e3e0″ custom_padding=”1px|||||” prev_background_color=”#ffffff” next_background_color=”#ffffff”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”-3px|auto|-40px|auto|false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.1″ custom_padding=”||100px|||”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.1″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n – DISINFORMATION \u2018SPIN CYCLE\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n –\u00a0CYBORG BOTS<\/a><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.1″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n – DIASPORA DOLLARS<\/a><\/p>\n – \u2018WE WANT OUR NAME BACK\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ module_id=”1″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ background_color=”#ffffff” custom_padding=”120px||50px||false|” prev_background_color=”#e5e3e0″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”30px|auto|-40px|auto|false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ locked=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n At the government headquarters in Skopje, the country\u2019s new official name \u2014 Republic of North Macedonia \u2014 greets visitors as they approach the Ionic columns of the building, renovated five years ago to look like the White House in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n It is a stone\u2019s throw from the city\u2019s main square, where a statue of Alexander the Great on a stallion looms over a Classical-style fountain \u2014 the result of a taxpayer-funded makeover of Skopje to give it a more antiquarian feel.\u00a0Many saw the revamp announced in 2010 as an architectural thumbing of the nose at Greece by the government of then Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski after Athens vetoed his country\u2019s accession to NATO in 2008.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_toggle title=”Read More” _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n nside government headquarters,\u00a0<\/span>Demijan Hadzi-Angelovski<\/b>, a 28-year-old social media expert at the information ministry, recalled how 10 or so influential Twitter accounts sought to dominate the news agenda in the run-up to the Prespa referendum.\u00a0Every day, three times a day, a different user would send one or two provocative tweets, which would then be liked and retweeted by an army of automated accounts, he said.<\/p>\n The idea was to \u201ctrend\u201d on Twitter and get picked up by big news aggregators like Time.mk.\u00a0\u201cTheir goal was to have the news sites view and reproduce these tweets, to make the information more credible,\u201d he said. \u201cThey then re-posted the news in a washing machine news cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTheir goal was to have the news sites view and reproduce these tweets, to make the information more credible.\u00a0 According to Information Minister\u00a0<\/span>Damjan Manchevski<\/b>, who oversaw the government\u2019s pro-Prespa referendum campaign, much of the recycled content was fake news designed to discredit the agreement.\u00a0\u201cMore than 10 per cent of articles in that period were pure misinformation,\u201d Manchevski told BIRN in an interview. \u201cThe bots on Twitter were the main source of fake news.\u201d<\/p>\n One story falsely stated that people living near the country\u2019s largest army base in the central Krivolak region would be poisoned by depleted uranium brought in for military training if the government ratified the Prespa deal and then joined NATO.<\/p>\n An investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the Investigative Reporting Lab Macedonia (IRL) traced the story to\u00a0<\/span>Zlatko Kovac<\/b>, a 50-year-old US-Macedonian who works as a Washington columnist for Russian news agency Sputnik.\u00a0Kovac did not reply to BIRN\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cKovac collaborates with a number of websites in [North] Macedonia that are part of the propaganda mechanism against the Prespa Agreement,\u201d said\u00a0<\/span>Saska Cvetkovska<\/b>, the chain-smoking editor-in-chief of IRL.<\/p>\n \u201cThe story was started by Kovac on Facebook, the news was immediately posted on Twitter, dozens of bots reproduced it and then several conservative online media \u2026 posted it as a regular news item.\u201d\u00a0As a result, Defence Minister Radmila Sekerinska spent a week frantically reassuring people it was not true, Cvetkovska said.<\/p>\n In the days before the referendum, other scare stories wormed their way into mainstream news.\u00a0Media reported that people could be prosecuted for disagreeing with Prespa, that the need to print new money would cause massive inflation and that Greece would get a blank cheque to do whatever it wanted.<\/p>\n None of this happened by accident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_toggle][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ module_id=”2″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ background_color=”#ffffff” custom_padding=”120px||50px||false|” prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”30px|auto|-40px|auto|false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ locked=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n n the runup to the referendum, the\u00a0<\/span>Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity<\/a>, an initiative of the Danish-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation, noticed a spike in bot activity on its social media monitoring tools.\u00a0\u201cThere is clearly a concerted effort to thwart the democratic rights of Macedonians and delegitimise the referendum vote,\u201d it said in\u00a0<\/span>a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is clearly a concerted effort to thwart the democratic rights of Macedonians\u00a0and\u00a0delegitimise the referendum vote.\u201d Two weeks before the referendum, the\u00a0<\/span>Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab)<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>of the US-based Atlantic Council think tank, which monitors digital propaganda, published a\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>showing that far-right Twitter accounts were boosting the boycott campaign.<\/p>\n Over a period of nine days, researchers analysed all tweets linked to the hashtags \u201c#\u0411\u043e\u0458\u043a\u043e\u0442\u0438\u0440\u0430\u043c\u201d and \u201c#bojkotiram\u201d (#boycott) \u2013 around 23,800 of them.\u00a0They found that more than 80 per cent were in fact retweets, a 4:1 ratio of retweets to original content that suggested rampant automation.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_toggle title=”Read More” _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n \u201cThere was well-coordinated, non-authentic activity that destroyed any normal Twitter talk,\u201d DFRLab researcher\u00a0<\/span>Kanishk Karan<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>told BIRN. \u201cInstead of discussing these accounts, they spammed others and bombarded them with thousands of mentions and retweets.\u201d<\/p>\n The DFRLab identified the nine most active Twitter accounts that helped the campaign go viral \u2013 and Kostovski\u2019s \u201cCheese\u201d account was among them.<\/p>\n <\/p> <\/i><\/p>\n According to Kostovski, the campaign had three main ringleaders: himself, a blogger friend named\u00a0<\/span>Igor Pipovski<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>(whose Twitter handle \u201c@m0rban\u201d honours populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban) and\u00a0<\/span>Zarko Hristovski<\/b>, a Macedonian web developer who lives in Norway and built the\u00a0<\/span>campaign\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201c#\u0411\u043e\u0458\u043a\u043e\u0442\u0438\u0440\u0430\u043c<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>belongs to the Macedonian people,\u201d Pipovski tweeted to\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>when asked about his role in the campaign. \u201cNobody should take the credit.\u201d<\/p>\n BIRN was unable to contact Hristovski, but Kostovski expounded on the worldview that he said motivated them all.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe live in the middle of a digital war,\u201d he told BIRN. \u201cWe nationalists and patriots on the one side, and internationalists, communists and former communists and social democrats on the other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe live in the middle of a digital war. We nationalists and patriots on the one side, and internationalists, communists and former communists and social democrats on the other.\u201d His\u00a0<\/span>Cheese account<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2014 which is followed by one in three Twitter users in North Macedonia, according to analysis using the\u00a0<\/span>Statcounter online monitoring\u00a0 tool<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2014 makes no bones about its purpose.<\/p>\n A pinned tweet at the top of his Twitter stream says: \u201cA place where you will find plenty of banners, gifs, memes and other propaganda material that will be useful for a successful social campaign. Network against the fatal referendum to change our identity.\u201d<\/p>\n In many ways, Kostovski has as much in common with alt-right white supremacists in the United States as with Macedonian nationalists. His Twitter posts bristle with far-right symbols and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n His Twitter profile picture was formerly a cartoon image of Pepe the Frog, a favourite alt-right emblem. These days, his header has a big \u201cQ\u201d, a reference to the popular far-right \u201cQAnon\u201d conspiracy theory of a \u201cdeep state\u201d plot against US President Donald Trump.\u00a0In a rare public appearance, Kostovski\u00a0<\/span>addressed a rally<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>in Skopje two days before the referendum wearing a \u201cQ\u201d hat and a \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d T-shirt.<\/p>\n We all fight the deep state and globalisation,\u201d Kostovski told BIRN. \u201cWe have the same enemies and similar ideologies.\u201d\u00a0He listed the populists who inspire him: Trump, Orban, French far-right opposition leader Marine Le Pen and British Brexit Party founder Nigel Farage. Many of his Twitter posts also feature former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were excited about Trump\u2019s election campaign and we tried to copy its methods and symbols,\u201d Kostovski said. \u201cWe wanted people especially to believe that Steve Bannon was involved in the [#boycott] campaign.\u201d\u00a0In one tweet in August 2018, he suggested that the \u201cillegal and treasonous\u201d government of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev was in hock to US billionaire philanthropist George Soros \u2014 a familiar figure of hate among far-right groups.<\/p>\n \u201cBoycott the illegal #Referendum for the Nazi #agreement,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n #Soros<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Government is illegal and treasonous. We will\u00a0<\/span>#LockThemUp<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for high treason. Soon\u2026\u00a0<\/span>#\u0411\u043e\u0458\u043a\u043e\u0442\u0438\u0440\u0430\u043c<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Boycott the illegal\u00a0<\/span>#Referendum<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for the Nazi\u00a0<\/span>#agreement<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>pic.twitter.com\/ori2aoATxe<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 \ufe3d\u2606\ufe3d \u0427\u0438\u0437\u2122 \ufe3d\u2606\ufe3d #\u0410\u03a8 (@C4i7Z)\u00a0<\/span>August 22, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Kostovski insisted that he and his fellow keyboard crusaders were in no way out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our group, we are all just normal people, with regular jobs and families, and most of us want to remain anonymous on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n But\u00a0<\/span>BIRN\u2019<\/b>s investigation shows there is more to Kostovski\u2019s anonymity than meets the eye.<\/p>\n Using a crawler application called\u00a0<\/span>Twitterbots<\/a>, a tool created by Athens-based software engineer Dimitris Papaevangelou to assess the likelihood of bot activity, BIRN analysed Cheese\u2019s Twitter output and found he averages almost 110 \u201cactions\u201d per day.<\/p>\n Computer scientists say any number of actions \u2014 tweets, retweets, likes and other interactions \u2014 over 70 suggests bots are on the loose.<\/p>\n While Kostovski said he only used automation in the early days of the #boycott campaign, BIRN\u2019s analysis confirmed that his Cheese persona is what is known in the computational propaganda business as a \u201ccyborg bot\u201d \u2013 half person, half machine.<\/p>\n These hybrids combine algorithmic automation with human intervention to get past Twitter\u2019s anti-bot defences, since automation is strictly no-go on the social media platform.<\/p>\n <\/p> <\/i><\/p>\n B<\/strong>en Nimmo<\/b>, a digital propaganda specialist at the Atlantic Council, has described the use of such bots as \u201ca game of numbers\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you create a sufficient number of false accounts and automate them, then there is a chance that they appear on the list of trending subjects,\u201d he told this reporter in an interview for a\u00a0<\/span>recent investigation<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>by the Athens-based\u00a0<\/span>Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting (MIIR)<\/b>.<\/p>\n \u201cSocial media is therefore the place where, with the proper tactics and five persons, you can generate the impression that five million people are talking about something.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSocial media is the place where, with the proper tactics and five persons, you can generate\u00a0the impression\u00a0that five million people are talking about something.\u201d Scrutiny of Cheese\u2019s network using\u00a0<\/span>Sparktoro<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>analytical software revealed that more than 38 per cent of his followers were classified as \u201cfake\u201d \u2014 likely to be bots or other tools of computational propaganda.<\/p>\n Asked what it was doing to counter such activity,\u00a0<\/span>Twitter<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>referred\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>to its recently\u00a0<\/span>updated policy<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>against what it calls \u201cplatform manipulation\u201d, which includes spam, \u201cmalicious automation\u201d and the use of fake accounts.<\/p>\n The\u00a0<\/span>company noted<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>that in May 2018, it identified and challenged more than 9.9 million potentially \u201cspammy\u201d or automated accounts. In September, however,\u00a0<\/span>it reported<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u201ca nearly 50 per cent drop in challenges issued to suspected spam accounts compared to the previous reporting period\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p> [\/et_pb_toggle][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ module_id=”3″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ background_color=”#ffffff” custom_padding=”51px||130px||false|false” prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#000000″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”30px|auto|-40px|auto|false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ locked=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n According to Kostovski, nationalist politicians were quick to jump on the #boycott bandwagon in opposing the Prespa deal.<\/p>\n Among them was\u00a0<\/span>Filip Petrovski<\/b>, a former lawmaker with the right-wing opposition VMRO DPMNE party who was involved in \u201cMacedonia Boycotts\u201d, a coalition of almost 30 small right-wing parties, political factions and civic associations.\u00a0Kostovski said the two met in the summer of 2018 to discuss working together. Contacted by\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>, Petrovski confirmed that he was actively involved in the boycott campaign.<\/p>\n As the main opposition party, VMRO DPMNE\u2019s official position towards the referendum was that people should vote with their conscience, though critics say the nationalist wing of the party was firmly against the Prespa deal.\u00a0\u201cWe have strong evidence that the centres of these online attacks are linked to the VMRO opposition, but they were not the strongest,\u201d Information Minister Manchevski told\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_toggle title=”Read More” _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n Rather, he said the most strident opposition to Prespa came from Macedonians living abroad. He cited the example of a Toronto-based businessman named\u00a0<\/span>Bill Nikolov<\/b>, president of Macedonian Human Rights Movement International in Canada.\u00a0\u201cThe most extreme of the diaspora, like him, are second-generation immigrants who have come to the country only a few times for vacations,\u201d Manchevski said.<\/p>\n Kostovski said Nikolov funded an anti-Prespa billboard campaign in Skopje after getting fired up online.\u00a0\u201cMany rich diaspora people with connections saw what we were doing on social media and multiplied our influence,\u201d he said. \u201cBill Nikolov was one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMany rich diaspora people with connections saw what we were doing on social media and multiplied our influence.\u201d Asked to comment, Nikolov told\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>in a Tweet:\u00a0\u201cNo Macedonian politician (from any political party) has the right to negotiate or change our name, identity and history. They attack and lie about those who defend our basic human rights but won\u2019t defend themselves against those who admit to wanting to erase our identity.\u201d<\/p>\n #\u0411\u043e\u0458\u043a\u043e\u0442\u0438\u0440\u0430\u043c<\/a>#Macedonia<\/a>pic.twitter.com\/zG1ojOBTD2<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Meto Koloski (@MetodijaKoloski)\u00a0<\/span>July 31, 2018<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Kostovski told\u00a0BIRN\u00a0the #boycott movement received several thousand euros from\u00a0Todor Petrov, leader of the World Macedonian Congress, a Skopje-based non-governmental organisation that boasts diaspora members in the United States, Canada, Australia, Italy and Germany.<\/p>\n In 1991, Petrov had advocated putting the Vergina Sun on the new country\u2019s flag. His World Macedonian Congress is widely seen as an ultranationalist movement.\u00a0\u201cThe World Macedonian Congress has connections with many Macedonians around the world and it is true that they helped campaign for last year\u2019s referendum boycott,\u201d Petrov told\u00a0BIRN.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Kostovski said other politicians \u201ctried to ride the wave we created. And they all demanded \u2014 and got \u2014 a lot of money from the Macedonian diaspora.\u201d<\/p>\n One such beneficiary was\u00a0Janko Bacev, president of the pro-Russian United Macedonia party, he said \u2014 though\u00a0BIRN\u00a0was unable to confirm the claim.\u00a0Bacev, who did not reply to a request for comment, was seen at\u00a0a violent anti-Prespa protest<\/a>\u00a0in front of parliament in June 2018 that police quelled with teargas and stun grenades.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_toggle][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ module_id=”4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″ background_color=”#ffffff” custom_padding=”51px||130px||false|false” prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#e5e3e0″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ custom_margin=”30px|auto|-40px|auto|false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.2.2″ locked=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.2.2″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n BIRN<\/strong>\u2019s investigation showed that Greek nationalists on the other side of the border also used computational propaganda to whip up a backlash against the Prespa deal.<\/p>\n Again, diaspora activists played a role in turning online propaganda into action on the street, with anti-Prespa anger fuelling the biggest protests in Athens and Thessaloniki since Greece\u2019s debt crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a geographical area where large populations were forced in the 20th Century to migrate for economic and political reasons, first to the US, Canada and then to Australia,\u201d said\u00a0<\/span>Tasos Kostopoulos<\/b>, a historian and investigative journalist at the\u00a0<\/span>Efimerida ton Sintakton\u00a0<\/span><\/em>daily paper in Athens.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is precisely these people, especially the second and third generation, who are involved in a raging fight online, exchanging insults on Twitter with hundreds of trolls and bots.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_toggle title=”Read More” _builder_version=”4.2.2″]<\/p>\n Like Cheese, one of the loudest Greek voices in the digital cacophony is a human-machine hybrid, according to\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n \u201cI AM A GREEK MACEDONIAN!\u201d says the\u00a0<\/span>Twitter profile<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>of \u201cPallas Athena<\/b>\u201d under an image of the Vergina Sun. \u201cWe 3.5 million Greek Macedonians are tired of being robbed of our IDENTITY, HISTORY, NAME AND SYMBOLS! We want our name Macedonia back!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p> <\/i><\/p>\n The sheer number of tweets from Pallas Athena\u2019s account \u2014 around 478,000 in five years \u2014 is a clear indication of automation, though plenty of the content is clearly human-generated too.<\/p>\n According to analysis by\u00a0<\/span>TweetBotOrNot,<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>a software application that uses machine learning to classify Twitter accounts as bots or human, there is an almost 70 per cent chance that Pallas Athena is a cyborg bot.<\/p>\n Using advanced metrics and monitoring tools,\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>extracted and analysed a week\u2019s worth of output from the account \u2014 more than 2,500 tweets and retweets.<\/p>\n The number-crunching revealed that Pallas Athena\u2019s online actions \u2014 human or otherwise \u2014 potentially reached no fewer than 9.7 million other Twitter users in seven days.<\/p>\n Geolocation analysis showed these users were in 106 spots across the globe including Athens, Toronto, Caracus, Miami and Melbourne.<\/p>\n Experts say such numbers show the power of computational propaganda to create an ever-expanding echo chamber from a single account.<\/p>\n <\/p> Contacted by\u00a0<\/span>BIRN<\/b>, the owner of the Pallas Athena account messaged: \u201cDear, I am not a bot.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDear, I am not a bot.\u201d She identified herself as a Macedonian woman living permanently in Sweden who took to Twitter in 2014 after she \u201csaw the people from Skopje claiming that they have suffered genocide from the Greeks\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cUnthinkable,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI come from Alexander the Great\u2019s [ancient city of] Pella and always my grandmother, Helen, used to talk to me about the crimes of Bulgarians and Turks in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cI started looking into old newspaper records and understood that they [people living in what is now North Macedonians] were committing the real crimes. So I started actively working on Twitter with the Macedonian issue.\u201d<\/p>\n In April 2018, she locked horns with Cheese in a public Twitter spat.<\/p>\n I AM A GREEK MACEDONIAN FROM EDESSA PELLA IN REAL ANCIENT GREEK MACEDONIA , THE AREA WERE ALEXANDER THE GREAT WAS BORN !The Twitter War for the Macedonian Soul<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/e_DSC1567.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGORAN KOSTOVSKI, THE MAN BEHIND THE \u2018CHEESE\u2019 ACCOUNT ON TWITTER, SITS IN AN OUTDOOR CAFE IN THE NORTH MACEDONIA TOWN OF BITOLA.\u00a0<\/em><\/h6>\n
PHOTO: KOSTAS ZAFEIROPOULOS<\/em><\/h6>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Government-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTHE GOVERNMENT BUILDING OF THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA IN THE CAPITAL SKOPJE.<\/i><\/h6>\n
PHOTO: KOSTAS ZAFEIROPOULOS<\/i><\/h6>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Index<\/h2>\n
Disinformation \u2018spin cycle\u2019<\/h2>\n
They then re-posted the news in a washing machine news cycle.\u201d
Demijan Hadzi-Angelovski
Government Social Media Expert<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/DSC1506-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDAMJAN MANCHEVSKI, INFORMATION MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA<\/i><\/h6>\n
PHOTO: KOSTAS ZAFEIROPOULOS<\/i><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Cyborg bots<\/h2>\n
Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/DFRLab-visualisation.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA DFRLAB VISUALISATION SHOWS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ACCOUNTS AROUND THE #BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN.\u00a0<\/i>\u2018CHEESE\u2019 IS \u2018C4I7Z\u2019.<\/i><\/h6>\n
IMAGE: DFRLAB<\/i><\/h6>\n
Goran Kostovski, alias \u2018Cheese\u2019<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Cheese-network.png\")
<\/p>\nTHE TWITTERBOTS CRAWLER APPLICATION SHOWS CHEESE\u2019S NETWORK. EVERY NODE REPRESENTS A DIFFERENT TWITTER ACCOUNT. RED NODES ARE ASSUMED TO BE BOTS OR CYBORG BOTS, ALSO KNOWN AS \u2018RETWEETERS\u2019 SINCE THEY COMBINE REAL HUMAN INTERACTION WITH AUTOMATION.\u00a0<\/i><\/h6>\n
IMAGE: TWITTERBOTS SCREENGRAB<\/i><\/h6>\n
Ben Nimmo
Senior Fellow for Information Defense, DFRLab<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/skopje-545567_1920.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTHE STATUE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT DOMINATES SKOPJE\u2019S MAIN SQUARE.\u00a0<\/i>THE INSTALLATION OF THE SCULPTURE WAS PART OF\u00a0<\/i>A CULTURAL PROJECT\u00a0<\/i>CALLED \u2018SKOPJE 2014\u2019\u00a0<\/i>DESIGNED TO GIVE THE CITY A MORE CLASSICAL LOOK.\u00a0<\/i><\/h6>\n
PHOTO: MAGDICA MAKEDONKA, PIXABAY<\/i><\/h6>\n
Diaspora dollars<\/h2>\n
Goran Kostovski, alias \u2018Cheese\u2019<\/p>\n\n
METO KOLOSKI, PRESIDENT OF UNITED MACEDONIAN DIASPORA, TWEETS HIS SUPPORT FOR BOYCOTTING THE PRESPA REFERENDUM IN JULY 2018. EXPERTS SAY DIASPORA GROUPS BECAME ACTIVE IN DRUMMING UP SUPPORT FOR THE BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN AFTER GETTING FIRED UP ON SOCIAL MEDIA.<\/i><\/h6>\n
\u2018We want our name back\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/BotorNot.png\")
<\/p>\nTHE TWEETBOTORNOT APPLICATION RATES THE CHANCE OF \u2018PALLAS ATHENA\u2019 BEING A BOT AT ALMOST 70 PER CENT. SINCE THE ACCOUNT CLEARLY USES AUTOMATION IN ADDITION TO REAL HUMAN INTERVENTION, IT IS WHAT IS KNOWN IN THE ONLINE PROPAGANDA BUSINESS AS A \u2018CYBORG BOT\u2019.\u00a0<\/i><\/h6>\n
IMAGE COURTESY OF MICHAEL W. KEARNEY<\/i><\/h6>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Pallas-Athena-network.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTHE TWITTERBOTS CRAWLER APPLICATION SHOWS \u2018PALLAS ATHENA\u2019 AT THE CENTRE OF A NETWORK OF BOTS AND REAL TWITTER USERS \u2013\u00a0<\/i>THE ULTIMATE DIGITAL ECHO CHAMBER.\u00a0<\/i><\/h6>\n
IMAGE: TWITTERBOTS<\/i><\/h6>\n
\u2018Pallas Athena\u2019<\/p>\n\n
Your country has bever been part of Ancient Greek Macedonia , it is in the 7
Region of Ancient Paeonia and you are not Macedonians !\u00a0<\/span>pic.twitter.com\/siXENjcijp<\/a><\/p>\n