How fake news on Facebook helped fuel a border crisis in Europe

BRUZGI (Belarus) • After more than a week sleeping in a frigid encampment on the border between Belarus and Poland, and an abortive foray across the frontier repelled by pepper spray and police batons, Mr Mohammad Faraj gave up this month and retreated to a warm hotel in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

But soon after, he watched with surprise and excitement a video report on Facebook claiming Poland was about to open its border and urging all those who wanted to enter the European Union to gather at a petrol station near the encampment that the migrants had nicknamed "the jungle".

Mr Faraj, a 35-year-old ethnic Kurd from Iraq, rushed back to the squalid camp he had just left, travelling 306km from Minsk to the petrol station early this month.

The Polish border, of course, remained tightly shut and Mr Faraj spent the next 10 days back in what he described as "like something out of a horror movie".

The EU has blamed the recent traumas along its eastern border on the authoritarian leader of Belarus, Mr Alexander Lukashenko.

The Belarusian authorities certainly have helped stoke the crisis, offering easy tourist visas to thousands of Iraqis and easing their way to the border with Poland.

But social media, particularly Facebook, has given vital help to Mr Lukashenko, as an unpredictable accelerant to the hopes of people who have fallen prey to the empty promises of profiteers and charlatans on the Internet.

Some were in it for the money, promising to smuggle migrants across borders for hefty fees; some appeared to bask in the attention they got as online "influencers" for sharing information; others seemed motivated by a genuine desire to help people suffering.

There has been no evidence to suggest a coordinated campaign by Mr Lukashenko to target migrants with fake information.

Fake news on Facebook, said Mr Faraj, who last week was moved from the border encampment along with 2,000 other denizens of "the jungle" to a giant warehouse converted into a migrant holding centre, "poured mud on our heads and destroyed our lives".

Since July, activity on Facebook in Arabic and Kurdish related to migration to the EU through Belarus has been "skyrocketing", said Ms Monika Richter, head of research and analysis for Semantic Visions, an intelligence firm tracking social media activity related to the crisis.

"Facebook exacerbated this humanitarian crisis and now you have all these people who were brought over and explicitly misled and ripped off," she said.

Researchers said smugglers openly shared their telephone numbers and advertised their services, including video testimonials from people said to have reached Germany successfully via Belarus and Poland, on Facebook.

The stampede by migrants to Belarus in the hope of getting into the EU began earlier this year when the authoritarian former Soviet republic relaxed visa policies for certain countries, notably Iraq.

Facebook, now officially known as Meta, said it prohibits material that facilitates or promotes human smuggling and has dedicated teams to monitor and detect material related to the crisis.

It added that the company is working with law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organisations to counter the flood of fake news relating to migration.

"People smuggling across international borders is illegal and advertisements, posts, pages or groups that provide, facilitate or coordinate this activity are not allowed on Facebook," the company said in an e-mail statement.

"We remove this content as soon as we are aware of it."

NYTIMES