darwing
Senior Member
- Dec 20, 2016
- 173
- 5
- 51
Hundreds of fake account admins and 1,929 Facebook advertising violations only begin to tell the story of the Epoch Times-linked, pro-Trump empire known as The BL.
Last month, Snopes exposed a media outlet named The BL — short for “The Beauty of Life” — as being directly connected to the controversial Falun Gong-linked newspaper The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times, which has effectively served as an arm of the Donald Trump campaign since 2016, has been banned from buying Facebook ads since August 2019 as a result of violations of the platform’s advertising policy. The BL’s pages stopped running ads then, as well. Despite our reporting that linked the two organizations, which included as just one piece of evidence a YouTube video of the exact office listed as The BL’s operation center in which two people who have written for the Epoch Times are introduced, The BL continues to deny any link whatsoever.
After this story was originally published, Epoch Times publisher Stephen Gregory disputed our characterization of links between The BL and The Epoch Times, telling us “no current Epoch Times staff member works for the BL, nor does Epoch Times have any business affiliation or business communications with the BL.”
In this investigation, we report that The BL’s haphazard brand of deception is not limited to its undisclosed links to existing media companies. Instead, its Facebook empire appears to be built on unambiguously inauthentic or fraudulent tactics, including the mass creation of fake American Facebook profiles and the creation of faux “pro-America” groups — all of which are run by The BL without disclosure, and many of which have their origins in Vietnam or other foreign countries. These activities, we show, are part of a coordinated strategy that serves to amplify the reach of The BL’s own content and inflate the perceived size of their audience, all while avoiding the burdensome rules associated with advertising.
A cornerstone of both The Epoch Times’ and The BL’s Facebook strategy had been to purchase massive numbers of Facebook ads that ostensibly promoted their organizations but were largely indistinguishable from Trump campaign ads. Our previous report showed that at least 1,929 ads created by The BL, representing around a half million dollars in money paid to Facebook, were removed for violating Facebook’s ad policies. The combination of advertising-policy violations and clearly inauthentic behavior — on top of The BL’s unwillingness to admit its connection to The Epoch Times — raises a serious question: What does it take for Facebook to consider a “media company” a bad actor on its platform?
We reached out to Facebook with a detailed list of questions regarding The BL and its tactics. A Facebook spokesperson did not answer any of those questions, instead telling us: “We are reviewing this information, and, as always, we will take action if we find violating activity.”
Speaking of James Roscoe, that profile picture is a stock image from the free photo website Unsplash.com (a recurring theme in many of the fake profiles is the repeated use of photographs found on that website). Occasionally, operators at The BL appear to use the same photo for different Facebook profiles with different names. Roscoe’s fake visage also happens to be used for another fake BL profile, this one bearing the name “James Anderson”:
Last month, Snopes exposed a media outlet named The BL — short for “The Beauty of Life” — as being directly connected to the controversial Falun Gong-linked newspaper The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times, which has effectively served as an arm of the Donald Trump campaign since 2016, has been banned from buying Facebook ads since August 2019 as a result of violations of the platform’s advertising policy. The BL’s pages stopped running ads then, as well. Despite our reporting that linked the two organizations, which included as just one piece of evidence a YouTube video of the exact office listed as The BL’s operation center in which two people who have written for the Epoch Times are introduced, The BL continues to deny any link whatsoever.
After this story was originally published, Epoch Times publisher Stephen Gregory disputed our characterization of links between The BL and The Epoch Times, telling us “no current Epoch Times staff member works for the BL, nor does Epoch Times have any business affiliation or business communications with the BL.”
In this investigation, we report that The BL’s haphazard brand of deception is not limited to its undisclosed links to existing media companies. Instead, its Facebook empire appears to be built on unambiguously inauthentic or fraudulent tactics, including the mass creation of fake American Facebook profiles and the creation of faux “pro-America” groups — all of which are run by The BL without disclosure, and many of which have their origins in Vietnam or other foreign countries. These activities, we show, are part of a coordinated strategy that serves to amplify the reach of The BL’s own content and inflate the perceived size of their audience, all while avoiding the burdensome rules associated with advertising.
A cornerstone of both The Epoch Times’ and The BL’s Facebook strategy had been to purchase massive numbers of Facebook ads that ostensibly promoted their organizations but were largely indistinguishable from Trump campaign ads. Our previous report showed that at least 1,929 ads created by The BL, representing around a half million dollars in money paid to Facebook, were removed for violating Facebook’s ad policies. The combination of advertising-policy violations and clearly inauthentic behavior — on top of The BL’s unwillingness to admit its connection to The Epoch Times — raises a serious question: What does it take for Facebook to consider a “media company” a bad actor on its platform?
We reached out to Facebook with a detailed list of questions regarding The BL and its tactics. A Facebook spokesperson did not answer any of those questions, instead telling us: “We are reviewing this information, and, as always, we will take action if we find violating activity.”
Speaking of James Roscoe, that profile picture is a stock image from the free photo website Unsplash.com (a recurring theme in many of the fake profiles is the repeated use of photographs found on that website). Occasionally, operators at The BL appear to use the same photo for different Facebook profiles with different names. Roscoe’s fake visage also happens to be used for another fake BL profile, this one bearing the name “James Anderson”:
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