STAR REPORT

On December 20, 2025, a female student activist at Dhaka University shared a screenshot of a Facebook post that called for violence against a fellow activist.

Alarmed, she wrote: “Getting seriously worried about … [name withheld] bhai’s well-being. Your views do not need to align with his in order to be concerned for his safety, especially in these dire times. If you recognise this person in the screenshot, or have any way to reach him, please step forward and take legal action.”

By the time this report was filed, the post drew over 10,000 reactions -- 8,500 of them “haha,” signalling mockery rather than concern.

While social media users agreeing or disagreeing with a post may react with “like,” “love,” or “haha”, a closer look at these 8,500 “haha” reactions revealed that one in every five came from suspicious profiles.

Many usernames appeared foreign, written in scripts other than Bangla or English, and lacked profile photos or personal details. Among them were accounts such as Kokou Khelios from Togo and Olivier Randrianjaka from Madagascar -- names and listed locations with no plausible connection to the post.

An investigation by The Daily Star has found that such accounts do not land on a Bangladeshi student’s post by coincidence. They are bot profiles that can be easily purchased online to attack opponents or fabricate support.

As part of this investigation, The Daily Star bought nearly 30,000 reactions across nine meme posts, using five dummy Facebook profiles and sourcing them from four separate “click farms” over two days.

Many of the same profiles delivering fake reactions for our posts were also active across the pages of dozens of political actors and at least six candidates running in the February 12 election -- supporting one side or trolling the other.

Experts warn that this kind of bot activities poses a serious risk ahead of the election, as it is often deployed to manufacture perceptions that are far from reality.

It also violates Meta’s policies.

Facebook’s Community Standards prohibit any artificial amplification of engagement, explicitly banning fake accounts, automated activity, or coordinated click farm operations to inflate reactions, followers, or shares.

“We do not allow attempting to or successfully selling, buying, or exchanging for engagement, such as likes, shares, views, follows, clicks, use of specific hashtags, etc.,” the standards state.

Yet the influence operations network uncovered in this investigation suggests that Meta’s detection systems are failing to catch them.

Meta did not respond to requests for comment sent via email.

THE DIGITAL MOB

The Daily Star analysed “haha” and other reactions across 263 Two

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