记录显示，在 2020 年美国总统大选前几周，外国经营的 Facebook 集团凯利·麦克纳尼官方至少有 456 000 名成员。
【原文】
“How great is our press secretary?” asked a meme posted on July 31, 2020, with more than 2,000 comments and shares.
“Re-elect President Trump, take the House, strengthen our Senate … November is coming. If you are ready to drain the swamp say ‘YES I AM,'” another meme read, also posted on July 31.
A third meme posted on July 30 asked: “Do you stand with Kayleigh McEnany?”
These memes could be browsed in Kayleigh McEnany OFFICIAL, a Facebook group that appeared to be a gathering place for American fans of the White House press secretary. According to Google search results, at one point, its membership numbered well over 450,000.
Kayleigh McEnany OFFICIAL was not an official group for the White House press secretary, nor is there any indication that she or the White House had any involvement with it. We reached out to Facebook to ask for information on the group’s removal, and the company provided the following:
“We removed this Group in August 2020 as part of routine enforcement against spammy and inauthentic behavior because it used a range of deceptive techniques to boost their popularity on our platform. This Group was managed from Macedonia and used compromised accounts to mislead people about its origin, make their content appear more popular that it is and drive them to off-platform domains filled with pay-per click ads and to YT.”
The Facebook account named Miki Jovanovski was one of the admins in the Facebook group. His Facebook account was still active weeks after the group disappeared. A Google cache archive showed Jovanovski announcing in June: “Let’s welcome our new members: THANK YOU ALL!!!” He also posted the same day asking for help with content moderation: “There have been a lot of people who comments against Kayleigh McEnany so because that i need a moderator anyone interested for that ?”
The Facebook account that posted the “Do you stand with Kayleigh McEnany?” meme also bears the name Elisabeth Kim. However, the woman pictured in the profile photo for Elisabeth Kim is wearing a name tag that says “Marti Jordan.”
According to Google cache, Elisabeth Kim posted in July: “We did it! Let’s show her how many more fans she has!,” displaying an image celebrating 200,000 members. According to a Bing archive, the post was liked more than 10,000 times.
Another Facebook account bearing the name Rebecca Scott was seen in late July posting another membership milestone. The personal account for Rebecca Scott featured nine photos all posted January 30, 2020. Two were stock images of flowers, American flag clip art, and what appeared to be an obituary-style pet photo, among others. Eight of the nine images had no likes, comments, or shares.
This post by Rebecca Scott included a special image with a banner explaining a goal to hit one million members by Election Day. It also urged current members to invite their friends, promising: “The bigger the party, the bigger the rewards!” The post did not specify what was meant by “rewards.”
At press time, efforts to reach out to Miki Jovanovski, Elisabeth Kim, and Rebecca Scott via Facebook Messenger yielded no response. All three accounts were still active on Facebook.