2013: Reporting Inauthentic WikiLeaks Facebook Pages to Facebook

I am writing you to complain about the use of Facebook to set up inauthentic WikiLeaks Pages for the purpose of promoting a website called wikileaks-forum which is equally inauthentic. The owner of this website uses the name to attract WikiLeaks supporters to enrol, post links of internet related articles, also encouraging members to donate to the forum for Hosting costs, request assistance in running the forum as mods admins and at the same time manage and admin WikiLeaks related Facebook pages that he has created to promote the forum. His name is Mark Goeder-Tarant and his Personal Facebook ID is 1286302961.

This forum is not related to WikiLeaks and neither are the Facebook pages. By using the pages he channels traffic to his website, for which purpose exactly is not clear. He has also used the pages as a means to bully by spreading lies. It is also the case that a number of posts have been falsely promoted by bought likes.

I used to be a Volunteer Moderator at his website, I have donated money towards its hosting costs and have assisted in managing three of the Pages that he had created (WikiLeaks Cablegate, The Global Intelligence Files and FoWL) before I realised that his intentions were not truthful and I left.

I would be grateful if you looked at the facts that I present below and take down these pages that are a Fraud. The Pages in Question:

Aggregate Likes 182,981

1. Evidence that the Pages are Inauthentic:

a. From the WikiLeaks Website: (http://wikileaks.org/Supporters.html) Statement about the Forum

The “WikiLeaks Forum” is not run or endorsed by WikiLeaks and has no connection to WikiLeaks whatsoever.

b. From the WikiLeaks Twitter Feed: (https://twitter.com/wikileaks/statuses/387193725790588928 )

“This letter* and Facebook group are fabrications. The group is controlled by ‘Mark’ and has nothing to do with FoWL. It is a fraud on the public, as is wikileaks-forum.”

c. The above mentioned pages have all the appearance of authenticity. The logos, relevant content regularly updated, a list of relevant recommended ‘Likes’. In some cases they even state to be an ‘Official Facebook Page’ of the organisation they are dedicated to.

See here for example: http://archive.is/w4Nyk in the ‘About’ page For Sunshine press it says and I quote:

Official Facebook Page– The Sunshine Press (Wikileaks), is an international non-profit organization funded by: Human Rights Campaigners Investigative Journalists Technologists Lawyers The general public http://www.sunshinepress.org

But I know that this is not so, this is certainly not an authentic page in as far as it is not an Official page for Sunshine press. It is controlled by Mark and it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. You can see for yourself here: http://archive.is/5j912 that most posts relate to the wikileaks-forum.com

In fact most of the pages above were set up in the same manner till at some point in Spring 2012 the message went round to his mods/admins that we should change all of them into ‘Community pages’ which certainly happened.

Still, even as Community pages they are fraudulent as they are not WikiLeaks supportive pages, the only one they support is Mark, his website wikileaks-forum.com and his blog support-julian-assange.com. You do not have to go further than the very first page of the links above, the very first posts there, to see clearly of what I am talking about.
Furthermore, the pages have become means of cyber-bullying. For your information, I analyse an example of this bullying that involved myself here: https://greekemmy.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1079&action=edit

So, I conclude: The Facebook Pages that are controlled by Mark are not authentic, they are not supportive, not authorised and from what I know the only reason they exist is to channel Internet Traffic to the websites http://www.wikileaks-forum.com and the http://www.support-julian-assange.com

2. The Purchase of Fake ‘Likes’

Further irregular behaviour includes the purchase of Fake ‘Likes for the posts in these pages. Here are some examples, I have analysed in detail the first and just list other examples you may wish to investigate.

Facebook Page: wikileaks-forum.com FB ID 100989556660994

https://www.facebook.com/wikileaksforum/posts/527499027343376 archived here: http://archive.is/c0dFs

The FB post was ‘Liked’ 153 times. It is again surprising. Despite the fact that the page has 33,971 Likes, most posted links normally receive less than 10 likes.

I analysed all 153 likes for this post and I found that :

151 Facebook Accounts Names were from the Indian Subcontinent, only 2 were not.

103 Facebook Accounts that had ‘Liked’ the post did not actually list the Wikileaks-forum page or any WikiLeaks related pages in their “Likes” List, which was publicly visible and accessible, So how did these account get to see this FB post?

44 Facebook Accounts that had ‘Liked’ the post did not have a publicly visible’Likes’ List.

Only 6 Facebook Accounts included WikiLeaks related Pages in the ‘Likes’ List.

The post was shared only twice.

By looking at these inconsistencies described above I conclude that the Likes are fake.

Other examples for you to investigate:

Facebook Page: FoWL FB ID 363067913731557

Post: https://www.facebook.com/WikiLeaks.FoWl/posts/597162466988766 archived here: http://archive.is/YRB2N

The post received 309 likes which is a remarkable number considering that the total likes for the page is 2,986

One has to wonder how such high number of Likes have been so quickly accumulated on this particular post.

If one examines the postings on the page the last 6 months the maximum a post was liked was 21 times with most posts receiving from 1-10 likes.

Facebook Page: WikiLeaks Cablegate FB ID 207230605981081

https://www.facebook.com/wikileakscablegate/posts/520604787976993 archived here: http://archive.is/ENQHs

https://www.facebook.com/wikileakscablegate/posts/511831705520968 archived here: http://archive.is/URdgK

If you wish any further information on the subject please do not hesitate to contact me directly

Emmy Butlin.

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