Instagram accounts fuelling Ceuta crisis with paid advice for help to cross

Image source, Anadolu via Getty ImagesImage caption, Many migrants have attempted to swim from Morocco to the Spanish enclave Ceuta

This weekend, Mohammed wants to travel from Morocco to the neighbouring Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on the northern tip of Africa.

It comes after roughly 78,000 migrants from Morocco arrived by sea into Ceuta in a matter of hours last month, 100 of whom died according to the Mayor of Ceuta.

The crisis has calmed since, but it has sparked tensions between EU nations who share open borders as well as criticism of the Spanish government.

Our research suggests that this has contributed to the influx, alongside other factors such as misinformation about changes to Spanish immigration law and allegations about weak border controls.

They said they had helped "many people" cross before and would give me information about the "sewer pipes" which I could use to help me reach the enclave safely.

But they didn't respond when asked whether I would get a refund if the crossing was not successful. They've since deleted several of their messages to the account.

Image caption, Part of the exchange between our dummy account and one of the accounts, under a pseudonym, claiming to help Moroccan migrants reach Ceuta

I first noticed the deluge of content about Ceuta when I saw a viral video showing two women in wetsuits walking through the city.

While the original post in Spanish sought to dissuade migrants from arriving in Ceuta with the caption "Ceuta can't take it anymore", some versions shared by Moroccan and Arabic-speaking accounts either changed the caption or cropped it out, so the clip only showed the women strolling freely.

This was just one of hundreds of posts that we are calling "mirage" content, which paint a deceptive picture of a place distinct from reality.

Some videos show groups of young men and women swimming happily in the sea - even though many have drowned making the trip in recent weeks.

Others show stories of people who have succeeded in reaching Ceuta - and then claim they have gone on to reach Spain or mainland Europe, despite about 75,000 of the 78,000 arrivals having been returned to Morocco by authorities.

Exposed: the faceless accounts inflaming the Ceuta crisis

Listen on SoundsThere were lots of similarities in the profiles sharing this kind of content. Nearly 40 of them had variations of the term Haraga and include Ceuta in their name or handle, often with a Spanish flag as a profile picture and with the calling codes for Morocco and Spain in the description.

Haraga in Maghrebi Arabic roughly translates to "those who burn" and is used colloquially to refer to migrants arriving in a new place and burning or destroying documents so they cannot be identified and deported back to their home countries.

The account history of these profiles, coupled with their posts and followers, indicated that most were being run from Morocco while a few were potentially based in Spain or Italy.

Lots of them had been set up several years before, but their content about Ceuta had gained more traction in recent weeks.

Image caption, The accounts are gaming the algorithm with aspirational videos of Ceuta

The accounts have managed to manipulate the algorithms on major social media sites by sharing emotive and hopeful content to gain more traction.

Insiders at the biggest social media companies have previously told me how posts triggering a strong reaction are more likely to go viral.

My dummy account, Mohammed, was a profile set to private and designed to look similar to the accounts of younger Moroccan people who were liking and commenting on the posts advertising crossings. I followed relevant content, including several of the Haraga profiles, and soon my feed was swamped with videos and content encouraging travel to Ceuta.

There appears to be a wider trend here, where people looking to charge migrants money for advice can easily set up profiles and game social media algorithms.

It is yet another example of how gaming an algorithm can fuel real-world harm.

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