Former Secretary-General of the Socialist Party (PS), Antonio Costa.
“We were asked to create fake social networking accounts to make PS support comments and António Costa and vote for online polls of television debates in favor of the party,” says Source of the Sun.
Between 2019 and 2020, during the campaign for legislative elections,
The Socialist Party (PS) will have hired a communication agency to implement a secret communication plan that involved the creation of about 300 false profiles In social networks, advances this Friday.
According to the weekly, the objective of the project, designated internally as “The Project”it was to reinforce support for the PS and the then leader António Costa, manipulating online party perceptions and influencing polls on surveys after television debates.
“We were asked to create fake social networking accounts to make comments to support PS and António Costa and vote for online polls of television debates in favor of the party,” says Sol Miguel Lopes, former agency collaborator, who participated in the project commissioned by the socialists.
The bots that the agency created were trained to look like real users. Agency employees Adbd to communicateextinguished last year, would resort to public networks, VPNs, encrypted software and browsers such as Tor Project to hide the origin of actions.
“It was all done secretly. Usually we were going to a public network, like a Portuguese bakery, for example. Even when we worked at the office we always used VPNs, encrypted software and anonymous browsers, such as Tor Project ”
The PS will have invested about 40 thousand euros from party funds in the project.
