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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. There is consensus that this material is not suitable. Further, there is not a clear clear consensus that should be covered in the main article due to the latter's size, rendering that not a viable ATD. Star Mississippi 13:55, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

MEK troll farm

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MEK troll farm (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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This is another one of Ghazaalch's POV WP:COATRACKs. There have been several already deleted such as "Western support of dictators" and "United States hypocrisy". The topic of this article can already be found in the article People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (where it's written with more neutrality). Alex-h (talk) 20:56, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Alex-h nominated this article for speedy deletion some days ago saying that the page you created covers a topic on which we already have a page –People's_Mojahedin_Organization_of_Iran#Propaganda_campaign. Because of the duplication. Then I explained that it is not duplicated,(there was not event a mention of the troll farm in that article) and that the main article, People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, is already too long as has been mentioned many times by nearly all users editing in that article. Then Deb restored the article. After that Alex-h moved some of the content of this article to MEK article to make another point. Two minute later he nominated this article again for deletion saying that it is WP:COATRACK; while it is just a spin-off article for another article, Troll farm#Albania and that there are many analyzes and reports about the subject, MEK troll farm, including the following:
  • Middle East Eye: the UK's Independent published its own investigation into the MEK - the “darling of Washington” that has “created a state within a state in Albania” - also addressing the group’s generally repressive nature and the existence in the camp of what amounts to a Twitter troll factory'. ... Obviously, the wild proliferation of fake accounts committed to demonising the Iranian government serves not only to warp beyond recognition the reality on the ground in Iran, but also to ultimately justify whatever form of “democracy” the US feels should be violently installed there.
  • The Guardian: the group’s main work in Albania involves fighting online in an escalating information war between Iran and its rivals. Heyrani, who left the MEK last summer, says that he worked in a “troll farm” of 1,000 people inside the Albanian camp, posting pro-Rajavi and anti-Iran propaganda in English, Farsi and Arabic on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram and newspaper comment sections. ...According to Marc Owen Jones, an academic who studies political bots on social media, “thousands” of suspicious Twitter accounts emerged in early 2016 with “Iran” as their location and “human rights” in their description or account name, which posted in support of Trump and the MEK. These accounts, says Jones, were created in batches and would promote Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric using the hashtags #IranRegimeChange, #FreeIran and #IstandwithMaryamRajavi.
  • The Intercept: Any remarks about the group or even Iranian politics in general can be expected to be met by scores of MEK-supporters commenting through replies on Twitter and other social media. Many of the pro-MEK accounts will repeat the same messages, often word for word, swarming the mentions of any commentator. Geoff Golberg, an expert on social media manipulation and founder of SocialCartograph, a social media mapping firm, took particular note of Alavi’s Twitter account, which appears to act as a node in an online campaign to boost the MEK’s profile. The account is heavily promoted by other pro-MEK accounts, as well as supporters of the group’s policy of confrontation toward Iran. ... “The Heshmat Alavi account is part of a group of accounts, which, for years, have engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” said Golberg. “The account is connected to thousands of inauthentic MEK-focused accounts, many of which regularly engage with the account’s tweets. ... Alavi persona is not what it claims to be. The use of fake identities to conduct political propaganda has become common in recent years.
  • AP News: SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook said Tuesday it has removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to an Iranian exile group and a troll farm in Albania... Facebook determined the accounts were being run from a single location in Albania by a group of individuals working on behalf of MEK. Facebook found other telltale clues suggesting a so-called troll farm, in which workers are often paid to post content, including misinformation, to social media... For one, researchers found that the activity seemed to follow the central European workday, with posts picking up after 9 a.m., slowing down at the end of the day, and with a noticeable pause at lunch time. ... “Even trolls need to eat,” said Ben Nimmo, who works on Facebook’s global threat intelligence investigations, on a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
  • Al-Monitor: what many Iran observers had suspected from the outset, a Twitter troll factory meant to influence the already contentious debate over Iran. According to the Al Jazeera report, the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) has set up a center at its headquarters in Albania, where 1,000-1,500 "online soldiers" are instructed to promote hashtags in support of overthrowing the Islamic Republic. Two former MEK members told Al Jazeera that they would receive specific daily orders on what to highlight regarding Iran and also which specific Iran analysts to attack on social media, often sharing the White House's critical messages against Iran and amplifying their tweets via bots.
  • Middle East Eye: Facebook removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to an Iranian exile group and a troll farm in Albania. The social media company said in a statement on Tuesday that it removed more than 300 accounts that were a part of a network tied to Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition body previously designated a terrorist group by the US. The social media giant observed that while the network had limited success in gaining any kind of meaningful audience, it was run by "what appears to be a tightly organized troll farm linked to an exiled militant opposition group from Iran". The accounts, including Facebook profiles, pages, groups and Instagram accounts, posted content critical of Iran's government while it "routinely praised the activity of the MEK". A number of tactics were used to disguise the fake accounts, including using photos of Iranian celebrities and dissidents, and also changing profile names.
  • The New York Times:I wasn’t shown the computer suites, which defectors had portrayed as a kind of troll farm: junior members using multiple accounts on Facebook and Twitter, typing messages that criticize the Iranian government, lionize the M.E.K. leadership and promote its paid lobbyists. When Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Bolton made public speeches in recent years, members were ordered “to take a particular line and tweet it 10 times from different accounts,” said Mr. Mohammadian, the former member.
  • ... MEK members based in the organisation's Albanian headquarters were encouraged to tweet pro-MEK propaganda. Heyrani noted that MEK members in the Tirana HQ received daily orders and that it was 'their duty' to praise anti-regime comments issued by politicians across the globe. Conversely, anyone who was not sufficiently critical of the ranian regime, or anyone who criticised MEK, were subject to attacks by MEK's troll farm.[1]

Ghazaalch (talk) 19:33, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Hussain, Murtaza (June 9, 2019). "An Iranian Activist Wrote Dozens of Articles for Right-Wing Outlets. But Is He a Real Person?". The Intercept. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
  • Keep. The topic is notable, since there is significant coverage in multiple reliable sources. Merging to the main article is not an option, since there's a strong push to trim, summarize, or split People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, so split articles make sense. I think the scope of the article could be broadened to cover MEK online propaganda in general, but I think that's beyond AFD scope. MarioGom (talk) 13:06, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The few sources (some of them not even reliable) used for this article are mainly made up of allegations. These allegations are from people that have supposedly left the MEK (such as Hassan Heyrani?), and we don't include random accusations from the public as the basis for encyclopedia articles. All of this is already in section 'Propaganda and social media', within an article that provides context (such as 'Disinformation through recruited MEK members'). Rather than trimming, the main problem in People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MeK) has been (and still is) POV pushing. Alex-h (talk) 07:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Alex-h: As I said before, this article is a spin-off article for Troll farm#Albania. Why are you insisting that this is part of another article? Because you recently moved part of this article to that one? Because we have an article for Philippines, shouldn't we have an article like Fake news in the Philippines? Or because we have an article for Turkey, shouldn't we have an article like AK Trolls? How many sources does an article like this need? And which one of the given sources is not reliable? This article is consisting of two sections. One of them includes the interviews. The MEK does not let people to get inside the Tirana Camp and interview with the online solders working there. So most of the interviews are with the MEK members who escaped from the camp. And they are not a few. The Guardian reporter for example writes that they fled the country to the EU and the US, but around 120 recent MEK escapees remain in Tirana ... I spoke to about a dozen defectors, half of whom are still in Albania, who said ...[1] We cannot decide whether the interviews are reliable or not, we just rely on reliable sources.Ghazaalch (talk) 09:27, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom and others, this is a small detail part of a much larger context, and anyways it's already in the main article. None of the "Keep" votes addressed this. Clearly a coatrack article. NMasiha (talk) 13:02, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@NMasiha: we have troll farm articles for different countries: AK Trolls for Turkey, Russian web brigades for Russia, 50 Cent Party for China, Fake news in the Philippines for Philippines, Public opinion brigades for Vietnam, and so on. Why shouldn't we have the same article for Albania and MEK that has a state within a state in Albania? Ghazaalch (talk) 04:54, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. ^ Merat, Arron (2018-11-09). "Terrorists, cultists – or champions of Iranian democracy? The wild wild story of the MEK". the Guardian. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
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