This document discusses two types of political botnets that exist in Mexico: fake support bots and fighting opposition bots. Fake support bots help promote political campaigns by retweeting supporters, coordinating hashtags to trend on Twitter, and inflating follower counts. Fighting opposition bots work to troll, spread fake news, spam hashtags, divert attention from unfavorable topics, and intimidate politicians and public figures opposed to their views. The document concludes by presenting two civic systems using bots to educate citizens about fake news and coordinate collective activism between bots and people.

1. Understanding Political Manipulation
and Botnets in Mexico.
Carlos Toxtli &
Saiph Savage

2. What type of political botnets exist in Mexico?
Mexico has two types of political bots:
● Fake Support Bots
● Fighting Opposition Bots

3. Fake Support Bots

4. Fake Support Bots
1. Retweet supporters or online content
supporting a political campaign.
2. Coordinate accounts to tweet same
hashtag to get it trending and support
a cause.
3. Padding Twitter follower count to
show support.

5. Most popular Fake
Support Bot:
Peña Bots
Bots that post content praising
the Mexican president:
Enrique Peña Nieto.

6. Fighting Opposition Bots

7. Fighting
Opposition Bots
Trolling: Create content that mocks political
opposition and organizes collective action to
massively mock opposition.
Trolling
Bots occasionally mocks opposition
and call audiences to also help mock.
“...Let’s make a hashtag that
says #epnSays and let’s make fun
of what the president says, let’s
make it a TT :)”

8. Fighting
Opposition Bots
Fake News.
1. Create a fake news story using
some factual truths.
2. Promote fake story with hashtags
and fake images.
Fake News
“This is how the Veracruz Lieutenant
Governor left his wife after beating
her yesterday.#beatingWivesVer”
Story was fake. But bots promoted and shared
the story getting also mass media attention.

9. Fighting
Opposition Bots
Spamming: Flood hashtags with spam
to limit discourse and remove hashtags
from trending topics.
Spamming hashtags
● People complain using #sobrinaEPN
about the president hiring his niece.
● Bots use #sobrinaEPN to post about
other things, spam hashtag and
remove from TT.

10. Fighting
Opposition Bots
Divert Attention. Remove unfavorable
hashtags from trending topics list by
replacing them with more favorable
hashtags.
Diverting Attention
● People post about doing rallies against the
president with #MarchaAntiEPN
●
Bots promote #DiaDePuente to divert
attention from unfavorable hashtags.

11. Fighting
Opposition Bots
Intimidating Send intimidating messages
to politicians and actors they oppose.
“I was sent many intimidation
messages on Facebook. I will not
back-down. It is not about for
me. It is about all of us!”
Intimidating

12. Civic Systems to Fight
Disinformation

13. Using Bots to Educate about Fake News
1) Bots automatically detect
possible fake news.
2) Bots discuss with citizens
possible fake news and helps
citizens build critical thinking skills.
Fake Real
Biased Real
Fake
This news
might be
fake. Who
do you
think
benefits
from this
story?

14. Botivist
1) Bots recruit citizens to
participate in activism and
collective action.
2) Bots coordinate and produce
collective action with citizens.
This news
might be
fake. Who
do you
think
benefits
from this
story?
What should we
do to fight
corruption?
Please take a
picture of your
voting booth
and report
irregularities
you see

15. Bots coordinate collective
action with citizens

16. Thank you!
Carlos Toxtli
@ctoxtli
carlostoxtli.com
Saiph Savage
@saiphcita
www.saiph.org