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More than half of posts targeting the two men appeared on Oct 25 \u2013 the day Mr Saiful and the Singapore embassy issued their denials, and hours after Mr Dino’s was first reported. Some of these posts cast the men as traitors or foreign agents, and described the supposed visit as an \u201cinfluence operation\u201d.”<\/p>\n
Many of these posts were published in short bursts of seconds or minutes apart, and by different groups of accounts, the largest of which appears to be a network of 68 lookalike, self-styled news pages spread across TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook.<\/p>\n
This group shared captions and graphic templates and included 15 TikTok accounts which were created on a single day in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of their posts included hashtags such as #operasipengaruh (Bahasa Indonesia for \u201cinfluence operation\u201d) and #foreigninfluence. On X, three of the network\u2019s accounts posted versions of the same story 26 seconds apart, one after another.<\/p>\n
For all that activity, the network\u2019s posts drew a median of about 760 views each.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, another cluster of nine accounts shared the same text cards, one of which asked whether the two men had \u201cbetrayed the nation\u201d. Three accounts posted this within two minutes, with captions also warning against provocation and \u201ccognitive war\u201d.<\/p>\n
A separate group of three accounts claimed the pair had received Singapore dollars to \u201ccause riots in Indonesia\u201d. Their shared caption, however, also acknowledged that the claim needed evidence and should not be treated as fact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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