© Reuters/David MercadoBolivian wannabe dictator Jeanine Anez dons the gear in a faux ceremony at the National Police Academy, La Paz, Bolivia, November 2019.
In the days preceding socialist President Evo Morales' decision to step down amid pressure from the military, thousands of new accounts were created on Twitter — with many of them parroting identical messages reading, in English, "Friends from everywhere, in Bolivia there was no coup."
According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an estimated 68,000 shady accounts were created as the Bolivia crisis unfolded, all of them sharing 14 hashtags which were either anti-Morales, or in support Luis Fernando Camacho, the right-wing politician who assumed power.
Follow-up analysis by Julian Macías Tovar, a social media coordinator for the Spanish left-wing party Podemos, found that 48,000 accounts were created in a four-day period, and appear to have been used solely to amplify these pro-coup hashtags. Tovar also stumbled upon a single account, operated by US Army veteran Luis Suarez, which had retweeted more than 13,000 messages containing the coup-friendly hashtags. Using a custom-made program to automate his Twitter activity, Suarez allegedly pumped out as many as 69 posts in a single second.
Comment: Exactly the same type of botnet operation was run out of Miami last January to 'amplify' the US govt's attempt to foment a coup in Venezuela:
Social media automation & infowars by the Venezuelan opposition
We've found the 'Russian-meddlers' and he is... US.