INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo
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Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo is a
former Google and Twitter manager and current CEO of Céntrico Digital, a Latin American-based digital agency
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In 2012, the emblematic podcast This American Life did a
special on politics in Afghanistan
They noted that in order to be a politician in Afghanistan, one needs to command a personal armed militia
That how politics is practiced in a fragmented country with a long history of violence, and without a stable, credible centralized
authority.
In the quaint and relatively peaceful Andean nation of Ecuador, snuggled between Colombia and Peru, a similar phenomenon takes
place: politicians don''t require armed guards, but they do require their digital equivalent: Twitter troll centers, or businesses that sell
online harassment as a service.
Indeed, much of the country public debate, or lack thereof, is now defined by the anonymous accounts that
threaten, cajole and, ultimately, aim to silence voices of dissent
Though Ecuador may be too small to register on the Twitter executive team radar, under their noses the lucrative business of weaponizing the
platform is already being exported to other countries in the region
The abuse of Twitter through troll centers not only threatens the company vision to become the world agora, it may also be putting lives at
risk.
Imagine a populist president raging against his country elites, including the news media, as corrupt enemies of the people
Because of his innate distrust of journalists, he uses Twitter to speak divisive rhetoric directly to his digital faithful
At his disposal is an army of hardcore supporters ready to do his bidding, echo his message and attack anyone who dares disagree
If you recognize the character in this story, it probably because you&re familiar with Rafael Correa (56), the populist former president of
Ecuador (January 2007- May 2017).
Correa now lives in Belgium and cannot return to Ecuador without facing trial for having ordered the
kidnapping of a political opponent
The opponent in question fled Ecuador to neighboring Colombia in 2012, where he was trailed by members of Ecuador secret police and briefly
Witnesses from the state security apparatus have since come forward to point the finger at Correa as the intellectual author of the
crime.
The staunchest defenders of concentrated power are those who hold that power.
Correa denies the charges and claims
they are merely politically motivated theater orchestrated by his former mentee and now sworn enemy, current Ecuadorian president, Lenín
But even if that were the case, Correa still has a number of other uncomfortable questions to answer to the Ecuadorian people
Since 2013, Latin America has been rocked by a corruption scandal calledLava Jato (the car wash) in which the Brazilian construction company
Odebrecht paid bribes to politicians across the region to win public works projects (the Netflix series O Mecanismo, or The Mechanism in
English, dramatizes the unfolding of the case in Brazil)
In total, Odebrecht is said to have paid $788 million United States dollars in bribes in 12 countries in exchange for government
contracts.
As a result of Lava Jato, former presidents in Brazil and Panama are in jail
In Peru, two former presidents are incarcerated, one is being held prior to an extradition hearing in California and, in April of this year,
one dramatically committed suicide when police came to escort him to prison.
Ecuador government was no exception to the Brazil construction
firm corruption: Rafael Correa former vice president and preferred successor, Jorge Glas, was convicted in December of 2017 of having
directed multi-million-dollar contracts to the Brazilian firm in exchange for massive payoffs hidden through a series of offshore accounts
Indeed, Glas poor approval rating was the cause for Correa asking Moreno to come out of retirement and run for president.
Were Lava Jato not
enough to spark wide-scale public outrage, a new scandal called Arroz Verde (green rice), revealed in May of 2019, exposed how the Correa
election campaigns had government contractors cover expenses in order to flaunt spending restrictions
Numerous former ministers from the Correa government are currently either in jail or awaiting trial, under house arrest or have fled the
Correa legacy as a tough yet modernizing progressive president is currently threatened by corruption scandals of previously unimaginable
proportions.
It wasn''t supposed to be that way
When Rafael Correa was elected in 2007, Ecuador was emerging from a period of political, social and economic instability
In 2000, the country banks failed and the following economic collapse lead to Ecuador adopting the United States dollar as its official
Two years prior, a war with neighboring Peru resulted in the loss of a significant portion of Ecuador claim to the Amazon rain forest
In the early 2000s, close to 10% of the population, more than a million Ecuadorians, migrated to Spain and the United States in search of
Three democratically elected presidents in a row were overthrown by street protests, including one colorful actor who was disposed after
only six months in office
He was officially declared to have abandoned his role due to mental incapacity.
A relatively obscure leftist economics professor, Correa had
a short stint as the country finance minister in 2005 during a transitional government
He left his post after a public spat with the International Monetary Fund
The IMF demanded Ecuador use its oil revenues to pay off its staggering external debt
Correa insisted that the country first priority should be its social debt and that the monies should be invested in health and
education.
The fight vaulted Correa into the public eye and he was able to ride the momentum all the way to the presidency, defeating the
country richest man in a run-off vote
Through his bombastic rhetoric, Correa took aim at the country business, political and media elites and fingered them as the origin of the
He captured the populations& unrest through the campaign slogan Dale Correa, which means both &Go Correa& and &Give ‘Em the Belt!
Once in
office, Rafael Correa set about an aggressive reform agenda
He rewrote the Constitution, the country 20th, and re-organized the state apparatus
Fueled by record high oil prices, Correa invested massively in highways, schools, hospitals and much-needed infrastructure like
hydroelectric dams.
Shunning the country traditional alliance with the United States, Correa turned instead to China, a decision that, as
The New York Times has documented, ended in billions of dollars being misspent on Chinese-built hydroelectric dams that don''t actually work
In addition, China sold Ecuador technology which, though promoted as a 911 public safety tool, was used by the Correa government to keep
tabs on and harass political opponents.
When Americans talk about Donald Trump latest scandals, Latin Americans mostly roll their eyes
After all, Latin Americans have seen the Donald Trump character interpreted by numerous strongmen, or caudillos, throughout the region
They have even seen how it plays out on Twitter
Both Venezuela late President Hugo Chávez and Rafael Correa saw in Twitter an opportunity to go around their countries& respective
traditional media and speak directly to the citizens, a benefit of social media President Trump has also touted.
Correa would regularly
engage in banter with citizens and do the work of government through tweets
His famous expression Favor Atender (please see to this) followed by a mention of a high-level minister or official was his calling card to
government to get directly involved in resolving citizen complaints brought to his attention through Twitter
Correa went so far as to host lunches in the presidential palace for the Twitter users who most supported and defended him
The novelty of the hands-on approach soon revealed its dark side.
What happened next is the stuff of Benghazi-like conspiracy
Many historians point to the 30th of September 2010 as the date when Rafael Correa started breaking bad
The day began as any other in the perpetually sunny capital of Quito
As mountain climbers will note, people at high altitudes sometimes make bad decisions due to the thin air, and Ecuador capital Quito stands
On this day, the National Police declared to the news media they were going on strike to protest a restructuring of their compensation
A group of police officers took a regiment and Rafael Correa decided that the best course of action was to go in person and confront them
Surrounded by his handlers and sustaining himself with a cane after a recent knee operation, Correa berated the police officers, ripped his
shirt open like a tropical hulk and dared the officers to shoot him in the chest
&Here I am and if you want to kill me, go ahead and kill me!& he cried.
What happened next is the stuff of Benghazi-like conspiracy theories
Depending on who you believe, Correa was either kidnapped and taken to a police hospital or went there voluntarily
The army eventually responded and a shoot-out ensued between the police and the army in the streets of Quito
Five people were killed, including three police officers, a soldier and a citizen
The president was eventually rescued by the military and restored to his functions about 12 hours after the debacle began
In a country used to coups and presidential turnover, democracy seemed to have won.
From the beginning of his time in office, Rafael Correa
was determined not to suffer the fate of his overthrown predecessors
Having experienced the potential for that fate up-close, Rafael Correa reacted by removing his tyrannical constraints
Correa became increasingly belligerent on and off Twitter
Notoriously thin-skinned, Correa made a habit of throwing people in jail for flipping him off
He even stopped his motorcade to personally stick his finger in the nose of an irreverent teenager who Correa later had thrown in jail (the
young man was eventually freed after apologizing).
Correa continued his crusade against journalists who wrote things about him with which he
Sometimes he insulted and threatened them; other times he hit them with multi-million-dollar lawsuits, which friendly judges were more than
willing to oblige with speedy trials and favorable outcomes for the president.
The Ecuadorian government, it was leaked, spent millions on
the Italian firm Hacking Team to spy on its citizens
On his weekly traveling Saturday Show, broadcast across radio, television and the internet, Correa would read tweets from people who
insulted him and then reveal their true identities and addresses and call for retaliation
Whilst on the world stage, Correa portrayed himself as a defender of free speech by famously receiving Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian
embassy in London; on the homefront, Correa hunted down dissenters and used the entire state apparatus to punish whistleblowers.
The Correa
government harassment wasn''t only digital: as Gimlet Reply All podcast documented in their story Favor Atender, one of Correa most fervent
Twitter adversaries, Gabriel González, received death threats in February 2015 after making memes that poked fun at things like the
government sometimes absurdly inefficient healthcare system
Worried for his safety, Gabriel left Quito
Then, at his hideout hundreds of miles away, he received a Sopranos-like wreath of flowers along with pictures of his wife and child
(Disclosure: Gabriel briefly freelanced for me as a contractor before the aforementioned events took place), stating it would be a shame if
anything were to happen to them
When the price of oil started to decline and Correa spending power was curtailed, his popularity began to waver
After this, the president digital antics only worsened.
Whenever anyone tweeted something unpleasant to the president, they
immediately faced a barrage of incoming attacks and insults.
Carlos Andrés Vera is one journalist for whom online harassment
become offline harassment
A documentary filmmaker, publicist and former editor of the Ecuadorian edition of Soho Magazine, Carlos Andrés drew the ire of the Correa
government by being highly critical of the administration, including its management of the Ecuadorian Amazon and its mishandling of the
safety of the uncontacted tribes that are currently threatened by oil exploitation in and around the Yasuní National Park.
A prolific
tweeter, Carlos Andrés frequently engaged his trolls, as well as numerous government ministers and operators
He first felt threatened when a troll account published a photo of his son that was on his phone but that he hadn''t published anywhere
The troll account suggested making a pornographic movie with Carlos Andres underaged son.
On more than one occasion he was threatened on the
street by individuals who made reference to his digital activism
Then, in 2015, Carlos Andrés was the victim of a secuestro express, or express kidnapping
Usually victims of secuestro express are roughed up and then driven from bank machine to bank machine to empty their account, and then set
In his case, Carlos Andrés was held and beaten for a number of hours, but the perpetrators never drove him to a bank machine nor did they
The event occurred at a time when Carlos Andrés was involved in fierce and aggressive Twitter debates with high-level government
Carlos Andrés is convinced the incident was coordinated by the government and meant to intimidate him into digital silence
According to Carlos Andrés, &no government, not even Russia or Venezuela, was as advanced as the Correa government in weaponizing Twitter
against its citizens.
Out for a run on a recent Saturday, I noticed a particularly dirty street close to an official billboard declaring
that &Quito is once again great.& In May of this year a new mayor had taken office after a surprise victory, slipping his way through a
crowded group of 18 candidates and crowning himself mayor despite winning less than 30% of the popular vote (in Ecuador voting is mandatory,
and though run-off elections are held at the presidential level, they are not used for municipal elections).
The new mayor, Jorge Yunda, was
a former Correa collaborator who had since distanced himself from the now out of favor ex-president
The owner of a number of radio stations whose frequencies were granted in a process many consider to be less than transparent and fair,
Yunda shamelessly copied Donald Trump &Make America Great Again& slogan and adopted it to Quito
Unlike Trump, Yunda resisted the temptation to name and shame a public enemy.
Despite the candidate poor showing in the popular vote, Yunda
team brazenly plastered Quito with &Quito is now great again& billboards, despite having yet to accomplish anything
Angry with the juxtaposition of a government declaring victory whilst having a major garbage management crisis on its hands, I took a
picture and trolled the mayor.
.@lorohomero, explain to me once again, this time slowly, how is it that Quito is great again?
By the time I
finished my run I had regretted my tweet
The tweet wasn''t going to accomplish anything and Twitter doesn''t need more angry voices shouting into deep internet space
I thought about deleting it, and when I arrived home and I opened my phone it took me by surprise to see that in 10 minutes the tweet had
received 134 responses, including one from the mayor asking me for more time to get his house in order.
The volume of responses was
surprising because it was early on a Saturday morning, so I dug a little further and quickly picked up on a familiar pattern: many of the
accounts of the respondents had less than 50 followers and they only followed a handful of people
Their usernames were often combinations of names plus a string of numbers
Most were saying more or less the same thing in response to my tweet
Soon thereafter, Twitter began automatically deleting some of the responses as if in recognition that the pattern of behavior was
malicious.
I say the behavior was familiar because I had seen it before
I was a vocal critic of the outgoing municipal administration (May 2014-May 2019) lead by Mauricio Rodas (44)
The mayor then reached out through a mutual friend and offered me a job, which I turned down.
Dear Matt, Thank you for your email
I&m sorry you won''t be able to join the team
I would have liked you to but I understand your reasons
I&m really enthusiastic about the idea that you might be able to collaborate with us through a consulting gig
Let please set this up through Carolina so we can do this immediately
A hug, Mauricio.
Though my relationship with the mayor was cordial, I continued to offer my critique of his administration work
After some time I began to receive messages that attacked me and used personal information, including a number of tweets that attacked my
and my wife fertility.
@ecuamatt poor guy, by the way is your wife (Michelle) pregnant yet? Can you not yet get it up? Hahaha
Aside from
its crudeness, what was surprising was that the then-mayor (2014-2019), Mauricio Rodas, had been elected to counter the increasingly
overbearing influence of Rafael Correa
Promising to stand up to the president, Rodas declared that it was time for a new form of politics without the tricks and dirty games
popularized by the Correa government
Yet here was Mauricio Rodas using the same means by which Correa attacked and silenced his critics.
A company close to Rafael Correa
was the first in Ecuador to begin to monetize the practice of Twitter trolling.
I researched my trolls and noticed a number of
patterns between their accounts and a number of accounts of certain high-level municipal officials who appeared to be outsourcing the
management of their twitter profiles, including who they followed and which images they used in their profiles and their posts
I then prepared a dossier that pointed to the intellectual authors behind the fake accounts and, in good faith, asked the mayor and two of
his advisors to look into the kind of behavior that was being undertaken on his administration behalf
I asked them to consider the impact on democratic culture and public debate should politicians like him replicate the behavior of silencing
critics through intimidation tactics
I received no reply, though the tweets and most of the accounts that attacked me were deleted
The trolling of the mayor critics, however, continued
One of the recipients of my dossier, Rodas& communication secretary, later became a communications advisor to the incoming Yunda
administration.
A company close to Rafael Correa was the first in Ecuador to begin to monetize the practice of Twitter trolling, and Twitter
itself was uncomfortably close to this company
Ximah Digital was started by young businessmen from the port city of Guayaquil whose main asset was their close connections to the
When Twitter began selling ads in Latin America in 2012, it hired the region-wide firm Internet Media Services (IMS) to re-sell its
advertising products in the region
Twitter then hired me in 2013 to manage its relationship with IMS (because I worked from a country in which Twitter had no office and am not
an American citizen, I was technically hired as a foreign contractor)
IMS, an accomplished digital re-seller with operations in much of Latin America, did not have an office of its own Ecuador and thus used
Ximah Digital as its official national re-seller.
IMS choosing Ximah as its re-seller was a strange decision, as the small digital agency
did not have established relationships amongst the country largest brands
Ximah did, however, have high-level government connections, and the government quickly became Twitter largest client in Ecuador.
During my
time managing the relationship between Twitter and IMS, numerous individuals came to me with accusations that Ximah was managing troll
centers whilst acting as the country exclusive Twitter sales channel, but I initially didn''t take the threats seriously
The accusations mostly came from individuals aligned with the opposition and, in that moment, I naively thought they were politically
I went so far as to unwittingly take Ximah representatives to meetings with political actors Ximah was allegedly trolling and I defended
I also don''t recall raising the issue with IMS before I left Twitter in May of 2014.
Ximah then lost plausible deniability on the 5th of
September 2014 when a video circulated on social media showing that a number of well-known troll accounts were controlled by Ximah Digital
IMS responded to the controversy by firing Ximah Digital and opening its own office
Afterwards, Ximah went quiet for some time, then re-launched itself as a digital consultancy focused on political marketing.
When it worked
defending Rafael Correa, the troll centers were easy to detect
Usually the troll accounts tweeted the exact same message as every other troll account in an attempt to control trending topics
The government also used its large number of verified accounts, which hold an extra weight in Twitter trending topic algorithm, to control
The troll accounts could be brutal: Whenever anyone tweeted something unpleasant to the president, they immediately faced a barrage of
incoming attacks and insults.
So how does one pay for trolling services? According to past reporting and confirmed by past and current
employees, the government would often disguise contracts as general social media management RFPs (request-for-projects), then ensure their
provider won the contract
In other instances companies were overpaid to provide legitimate services and there would be an agreement beforehand to provide trolling
services in addition to the legitimate services.
Tracking the contracts can be tricky: As the investigative journalists at the
leak-publishing site Milhojas have reported, a network of over 16 agencies, some of whom listed unaware farm-workers as their general
managers on official documents, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in government contracts
Many of these agencies shared a single official address, the same address as Ximah Digital.
According to company insiders, Ximah has since
sophisticated its operation and now exports its services to other countries in Latin America
Whereas reverse image searches used to reveal the origin of their fake profile pictures, Ximah now scours the Ecuadorian coastal provinces
and takes pictures of digital exiles to use their unique pictures as profile images
Ximah has also invested in technology, including AI, to enable automatic responses that are no longer copy-paste and therefore harder to
Ximah also trains other digital agencies to be trolls: Former employees from Ximah and employees from other local agencies, including
agencies that manage major international clients in industries such as telecommunications, confirmed that Ximah trained their staff how to
troll.
If companies like Ximah were founded because of an ideological conviction and affinity with Rafael Correa, they no longer have any
qualms about who they work for
One morning I received a WhatsApp message alerting me to a corruption scandal involving a politician that used to be aligned with Rafael
Correa and who was running for mayor of Guayaquil, Ecuador largest city
The sender number came from Cambodia, which was strange
The language and the aesthetics of the &leaks& page was reminiscent of past work I knew to be from Ximah: an anonymous source then confirmed
that Ximah had been hired to manage the slanderous campaign on behalf of Cynthia Viteri, the eventual winning candidate of Guayaquil
That fact was also confirmed by a political operative close to the Viteri campaign
Viteri political party was meant to be the sworn enemy of Rafael Correa
Viteri herself was the victim of Ximah trolling
In numerous campaigns throughout the years, Viteri promised a break from the Correa-era demagoguery… and yet.
Rafael Correa eventually
made a career defining miscalculation
Though prior to leaving office Correa reformed the constitution he authored in order to remove the term limits he once insisted upon, he
left power temporarily in the hands of his first vice president, the one not in jail for corruption charges, Lenín Moreno.
Tensions between
the out-going and in-coming presidents started to show in the campaign, but no-one anticipated the complete 180 that would happen when the
wheelchair bound Moreno would assume office
Throwing his predecessor and former mentor under the bus, Moreno promised to investigate and prosecute corruption &caiga quién caiga,& or
Moreno, true to his promise, lost his first and second vice presidents to corruption charges
Moreno also held a referendum to reinstate term limits.
Correa spends his days tweeting hate from an attic in Belgium to his weakened but
still dangerous troll army
He, the man who once wielded the power of a state against his enemies, now wallows in his own victimhood
So belligerent were his posts that Facebook closed his account
Twitter hasn''t censored him
Correa talks about returning to Ecuador as a vice-presidential candidate in two years
Ecuador weak institutions and strong journalists tremble at the thought.
In his drawn-out interview with Joe Rogan, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
speaks sincerely about the desire to have Twitter become the world discussion form
When Twitter works well it can foster debate and generate otherwise impossible interactions between people from all walks of life
It is clear that Jack firmly believes in this mission.
At the same time, Jack is notoriously tone-deaf, as was put on display when he
tweeted about the benefits of vacationing in Myanmar without so much as a thought for the victims of the Mynmar government ongoing genocidal
campaign against its Muslim population
As a former insider and as a close watcher of Twitter growth and evolution, I am not convinced Twitter really feels the urgency to make its
platform a safer space for healthy debate and accurate information.
Twitter indifference is Latin America loss
For much of the history of Latin America, media ownership has been concentrated in the hands of a few who generally held sway over public
Media outlets often belonged to prominent businessmen from important industries
The concentration of power in the hands of a few brokers from business, media and politics represented a Petri dish for
corruption.
Twitter is raw, open and immediate, allowing the crowd to determine relevance
Twitter blew up in Latin America because it represented a true opportunity to break from the aforementioned traditional power
Unlike Facebook, which tries to curate the world information to increase our engagement, Twitter is raw, open and immediate, allowing the
crowd to determine relevance
All of a sudden voices that were excluded from national conversations can now be heard, and they can determine and influence debates, much
like the #BlackLivesMatter (2013) and #MeToo (2017) movements in the United States.
Information that used to be suppressed now achieves its
It is no coincidence that the rise of Twitter coincides with the unraveling of a corruption scandal that compares in size and scope only to
the corruption inherent in the European colonization of the Americas
In the digital age it is harder to hide information
Corruption, the region chief operating system, leaves an Exxon Valdez-sized oil-slick of a paper trail
Those who benefit from corruption are, for the first time, vulnerable.
If information is power, that means that when information is
democratized, power is democratized
But the expression of that power, meaning the systems through which that power is exercised, do not necessarily democratize
Indeed, maybe our greatest democratic gap of the modern era is found in the fact that humans can produce a big bang of information every
day, but our democracy, as the Argentine democratic hacktivist Santiago Siri has stated, can only process one bit of information per citizen
We have sophisticated users trying to stuff their sophisticated thoughts, expressions and identities into a system with wildly outdated
hardware and software that appears to be infected with a powerful firmware virus called corruption.
And not everyone has an interest in
In the same way that a small number of powerful Bitcoin miners can prevent Bitcoin from increasing the block size, there are powerful actors
who benefit from preventing an upgrade to democracy
Principally, those actors who have figured out how to hack and monopolize the old system will seek to ensure the new system does not
threaten their concentrated hold on power
Even if they started out as rebels in the old system, as Rafael Correa once did, the rebels eventually learn how to be successful in the old
model and hence become its strongest defenders.
Indeed, the staunchest defenders of concentrated power are those who hold that power
Increasingly desperate to stay at the helm, the holders-on employ mafia-like tactics to defend their mafia-like organizations, all in the
name of their good intentions and sacred causes wrapped in a bow of &for the people.& In this world, however, there is only one truth, and
that truth weaves a thread between all Latin American governments, be they dictatorial or democratic, left or right, loved or despaired:
that idea is that the ends always justifies the means.
Twitter threatens the concentration of power of the old system, which is why Twitter
becomes the battleground between tyranny and democracy
The winners in the old system, as discussed here, are fighting back, and that fight is coming to a democracy near you
By not taking sides, Twitter is ultimately taking a side
By siding with the trolls in the name of free speech, Twitter is standing against everyone else free speech
Twitter troll centers in Latin America aren''t an unfortunate minor externality or a regional nuance: they&re a business model that
threatens to take away any value that the platform might create
The stakes are unimaginably high.
