Mónica Vega Aguirre appeared to be the clear winner of a Facebook poll about candidates for mayor of Tijuana, with around 13,000 heart reactions. However, a review conducted by PUNTO NORTE revealed that the vast majority of these interactions did not come from real profiles, but rather from fake accounts or people in other countries.
Thousands of profiles reacted with a “heart” in support of the director of the Tijuana Public Services Commission, but their “fans” have names in alphabets other than Spanish and are located in the Philippines, Indonesia, Liberia, Cameroon, Madagascar, Vietnam, China, and India, among other distant countries.
Of the thousands of reactions in favor of the former PAN member, fewer than 30 corresponded to real profiles in Tijuana, and several of these were linked to her associates in the public positions she has held.
The supposed “supporters” backing Mónica Vega for the most part also come from countries like Mozambique, Germany, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Singapore, as well as various African nations; many of these profiles even feature minors.
The official’s supposed advantage in the Morena government was exposed as an inflated popularity achieved through the use of financial resources to hire bot farms.
Reactions of this kind, designed to deceive on social media, are offered in the illegal internet market, which uses fraud and trickery to circumvent Facebook’s policies. The platform prohibits the use of fake or automated accounts to inflate interactions and simulate support.
Facebook’s policies stipulate that accounts must represent real people and penalize the artificial manipulation of “likes” or reactions, which they classify as inauthentic behavior—a way of deceiving users about the true popularity of content.
Packages of a thousand interactions are offered for just a few dollars, so a number like the one recorded in the post can be acquired for only a few hundred or a few thousand pesos, making these types of informal polls easily manipulated.
The same is true for the “second place” in the poll: César Damián Retes, current proportional representation deputy for the National Action Party (PAN), who calls himself Tijuana’s representative in the Chamber.
Damián Retes appears with around 3,600 “I care” reactions, but, as in the case of Mónica Vega, most of these come from profiles located in countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
In this regard, some analysts consulted by PUNTO NORTE explained that this behavior could be due to an error when acquiring interactions for Mónica Vega.
The “Care” emoji used to vote for Damian Retes and the “Love” emoji used for the former PAN member share a similar visual element: a heart. However, the former includes a yellow face hugging it, which may have caused confusion when purchasing these types of bot farming services.
In the case of Mónica Vega, the fraudulent poll brought to mind a career marked more by partisan recycling and electoral defeats at the polls.
The director of CESPT began her political career in the PAN, where she was a member for several years and became a youth leader. Within that party, she aspired to a candidacy on multiple occasions but was systematically excluded.
Later, she joined the Social Encounter Party, which offered her a council seat. She obtained this position thanks to the votes received by the slate headed by Julián Leyzaola, then a candidate for mayor.
Vega later moved through the Transformemos movement, then joined the Green Party, and today, within her political circles, she is once again being mentioned as a potential candidate, now under the Morena banner.
One of the most revealing episodes of this party-hopping journey occurred during the Senate election, when Mónica Vega went from criticizing Jorge Hank, whom she accused of “corruption,” “enjoying privileges in government,” and being a “violent perpetrator,” to ending up as a candidate on the ticket with his son, Juan Carlos Hank.
In previous campaigns, the former candidate threatened, “The guy from the Hipódromo will lose all his benefits,” and that “we are going to end the corruption in there.”
That contest, however, was a failure for the Green Party ticket. The 2024 federal election left her out of the Senate, and after the defeat, she returned to the state cabinet as Secretary of Environmental Protection.
The misleading poll and Mónica Vega’s track record in electoral results open up the hypothetical possibility that this time she might actually achieve a successful candidacy… in the Philippines, Indonesia, and some country on the other side of the world.
Source: puntonorte.info
