The #Televisaleaks research reveals the existence of a network of bots, digital incubators, pages, groups and websites that try to influence the public debate by promoting topics, but also generating false news and open attacks for those who pay their services.
A filtration of more than 5 Terabytes exposes the operation of the Televisa Strategic Communication team, known as “Palomar”, and the use they make of the services of Metrics To Index, a company dedicated to creating discredit campaigns and viralize them on the Internet.
In October 2018, one of the founding partners of Metrics, Juan Manuel Torres, sent a document chat to a document that includes the company’s “status”, which reports on a structure of 500 “humanized accounts” and 300 incubators, which total 4.7 million followers.
On Facebook they had 2.4 million followers through pages such as “conspiracy”, “national monitor”, “gossiping.” Some are masked as digital media or dissemination portals, while others share memes and alternate with propaganda.
How is a trendig topic?
Another internal document, dated in 2017, created for the Challenge 4 elements program, includes a manual and costs to establish a trend on Twitter, now X.
According to the report, between 1,600 and 2,300 tweets are needed, with a minimum of 923 unique users. The figures vary depending on the time when you want to place a topic between the main ones of that social network.
The document estimates a cost of 688 thousand 750 pesos to reach 100% of social networks in Mexico City.
The strategy was applied to spread Televisa programs, but mass filtration shows that Metrics used it in the political sphere regardless of the party or ideology.
Thus a campaign is armed
Thanks to the 5 terabytes of the #Televisaleaks research we know how a team or customer that access the Metrics services works.
In the case of Televisa, everything is born from a war Room (war room) headed by Javier Tejo Dondé, who chooses the messages to be communicated or the objectives that must be attacked.
His team, known as “Palomar”, designed false notes, videos, posts in networks and even memes that were later disseminated in accounts driven by bots or advertising.
Metrics operation
Aristegui News made a mapping of the accounts and networks that Metrics to Index operates, starting from the massive television filtration and the goal transparency data (owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads).
In that network, discredit campaigns against Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Claudia Sheinbaum, Alejandro Gertz Manero, Norma Piña, Marcelo Ebrard, Adam Augusto López, Andrea Chávez, Alejandro Armenta, Layda Sansores, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, Luisa Cantú Cantú, Anabel Hernández and Carmen Aristegui, among other more goals, among other more goals.
In turn, they have favored characters such as Omar García Harfuch, Arturo Zaldívar, Alfonso Durazo, Xóchitl Gálvez, Ignacio Mier, Ricardo Monreal, as well as Televisa executives such as Bernardo Gómez and Javier Tejo Dondé.
Metrics helps Zaldívar and protects Monreal
A monitoring to the pages administered by Metrics allows you to meet your favorite clients or objectives. Among them was the now policy and presidency government coordinator, Arturo Zaldívar. At the time, he received positive messages from the original accounts that Metrics controlled, such as “conspiracy” and “national monitor.”
According to Aristegui News investigation, it was found that the accounts came from Metrics and received guidelines or advertising paid to take the contents to thousands or millions of people.
In 2019, the year in which Zaldívar reached the presidency of the Supreme Court, Metrics obtained contracts by the Supreme Court for 47 million pesos.
Another character favored with campaigns is Ricardo Monreal, just when Metrics obtained millionaire contracts with the Senate of the Republic.
Despite this, the current president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has been the target of network attacks operated by Metrics
“To @Martibatres @Mario_delgado @claudiashein and Morenarcos that mock that we were a few thousand who attended the march, I ask them: how many Mexicans are needed to put together a revolution?”
This publication was made by Alexander Nixteca (@nixteca) on November 14, 2022 in the framework of the protests in defense of the National Electoral Institute and the Pink Marea.
Although the user was created during the marches and his first publications were for promo a to the great rosatoday no longer uses the hashtag #yodefandoaline and its efforts focus on Defend President Claudia Sheinbaum.
From November 2022 to May 2023, this profile shared content against Sheinbaum, among which criticisms at the service of the Mexico City Metro and making it responsible for the collapse of Line 12.
When the account changed the pink for the icing, he published a tweet announced the creation of the #guardianesDelmeter movement and began to defend the operation of this transport system against constant criticisms.
“These things do not go out of negligence, they do not want to load this dead to @claudiashein,” he wrote in response to a video that shows the roof collapse of the Eugenia station.
“Good morning, except Mexicans who want my president @claudiashein to go wrong,” he says in one of his most recent publications this account.
The “Conspiracui” page paid for promoting publications against Claudia Sheinbaum, Adam Augusto López and Marcelo Ebrard during Morena’s internal process to choose his presidential candidate.
Similarly, the Facebook page “We are all Morena”, with 114 thousand followers, paid dozens of advertisements to promote Claudia Sheinbaum during the 2024 elections. Seven ads remained active until May 30, 3 days before the elections that gave the triumph to the then official candidate.
One of the largest pages is “national monitor”, which has hundreds of political publications paid. Through this account, the “operation by denialing Norma Piña” was also disseminated (orchestrated by Televisa, according to the archives of this investigation), through which they viralized a video against the minister because he denied in an interview a meeting with Alejandro “Alito” Moreno and other ministers.
The video was originally published in “We are all Morena” and viralized on Facebook and X through other accounts that shared it.
Additionally, “National Monitor” promoted by advertising guidelines to Morena characters such as Ignacio Mier and Julio Menchaca and Ricardo Monreal, although the review of this medium shows that systematically attacked proposals of the then President López Obrador, such as the electrical reform, the well -being gas, the purchase of Deer Park, among others.
Through its pages, the operators of Metrics paid advertising guidelines against the head of the Attorney General’s Office, Alejandro Gertz Manero, in the case of the El-Mann Arazi brothers who resulted in the delivery of a check to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for 2 billion pesos, which was presumed at the Mañanera Conference
The “conspiracy” page paid advertising to disseminate notes, cartoons, images and videos about the case, criticizing Alejandro Gertz Manero and accusing that the payment was an “extortion” and that it was aimed at that the El-Mann brothers were forgiven for “their fraud to infonavit.”
“National Monitor” also paid to give more reach to content against Gertz Manero for the El-Mann case, accusing the attorney general of leaving the brothers free in exchange for the payment of 2 billion pesos.
“How easy it was to get a fairy godmother to Moses, Max and André El-Mann with a small check of 2 billion pesos” says an announcement for which he paid “national monitor” to reach at least 10,000 Facebook users.
This same page does not adopt the same critical position against the Zaga Tawi brothers, also involved in the case of Infonavit. On the contrary, “National Monitor” has paid advertising to position them as victims of political persecution.
#TelevisaLeaks. By: Carmen Aristegui, Sebastián Barragán Hidalgo, Brandon J. Celaya Torres, Regina Diez Gutiérrez, Juan Omar Fierro and Lilia Saúl Rodríguez.
