META – the owner of Facebook – has challenged the hypothesis put forth by NASK regarding alleged foreign interference in the Polish elections. “The administrator linked to the suspicious pages has confirmed their identity and is located in Poland,” stated the digital giant.
On Wednesday, NASK issued a statement indicating that “political advertisements have been identified on the Facebook platform which may have been financed from abroad.”
As NASK explains in its communiqué, “the actions appeared to support one of the candidates while discrediting others.”
“The advertising campaigns run through these accounts particularly targeted Rafał Trzaskowski, Karol Nawrocki, and Sławomir Mentzen. The analysis points to a possible provocation. Its goal may have been to damage the candidate allegedly supported by such advertisements and to destabilize the situation ahead of the presidential elections,”
reads the official release.
According to a report earlier this week by the news portal niezalezna.pl, over the past month, entities formally independent of Rafał Trzaskowski have spent massive sums on political agitation on Facebook—often of a defamatory nature—amounting to nearly twice the Facebook campaign expenditures of Karol Nawrocki’s electoral committee.
Taking NASK’s communiqué and its implications at face value, one could infer that the smear campaign seemingly promoting Rafał Trzaskowski was, paradoxically, a provocative action aimed at harming him.
META: No Evidence of Foreign Interference
On Wednesday evening, META, the owner of Facebook, issued a statement—forwarded to the Polish Press Agency (PAP) through the PR agency Burson—clarifying that the administrator linked to the suspicious “pages confirmed their identity and is located in Poland.”
META emphasized that it had found no evidence of foreign interference. It further explained that any user posting advertisements related to social issues, elections, or politics on META’s platforms is required to undergo a verification process in order to confirm their identity and establish residency in the country where the ads are being published.