Researchers at Dismislab have exposed a significant bot network on Facebook that has been actively promoting political messages in favour of the Bangladesh Awami League, the ruling party during the 12th Parliamentary Election held in January this year. The network, responsible for over 21,000 comments, was discovered after a Dismislab researcher identified suspicious activity on a seemingly unrelated Facebook post by the news outlet bdnews24.com.

The discovery and scope of the bot network

The initial discovery was made on June 21, when a Dismislab researcher noticed a political comment under a bdnews24.com Facebook post about color printers. The comment, which stated, "This election will be transparent. People will be able to vote freely in the upcoming election. The BNP is scared to participate because they can't rig the vote this time," was out of context and triggered further investigation. This led to the uncovering of a bot network that was highly coordinated and extensive in its reach.

Dismislab's research identified 1,369 Facebook accounts that were involved in this network. A significant proportion of these accounts (77%) were registered under female names, with a striking similarity in their naming patterns. For example, 24% of these female profiles had the last name "Akter" (or its variant "Aktar"), with names like Diya Akter, Riya Akter, Liza Akter, and Lima Akter being common. Male profiles frequently used surnames like "Ahmed" and "Islam." In both male and female accounts, 90% had names consisting of two words, sometimes splitting a single name into two, such as "Ri Pa" or "Mi Na."

Profile patterns and characteristics

In line with traits typically associated with fake Facebook profiles, Dismislab reviewed the privacy settings, friend counts, posting patterns, and profile pictures of these accounts. They found that 247 profiles were locked, while of the remaining 1,122 accounts, 70% used profile pictures sourced from elsewhere on the internet. Notably, some pictures were used across multiple profiles. For instance, a single image was found to be used by eight different accounts, including those named Fahad Islam, Rajib Ahmed, and Mamun Ahmed, all of which uploaded the picture on the same day, November 30, 2023.