On Tuesday night the website Buzzfeed posted a story that might concern the likes of François Fillon, Emmanuel Macron and other candidates in the upcoming French presidential election. Although perhaps not Marine Le Pen.
The article was titled: "Trump Supporters Online Are Pretending To Be French To Manipulate France’s Election" and suggested fans of the controversial US president were now mobilizing to help Trump admirer Marine Le Pen in her battle for the Elysée Palace.
The report included images from a private chatroom they had gained access to called "The Great Liberation of France", hosted on a messaging platform called Discord.
It revealed how Trump supporters are organising online to create fake French accounts on social media.
Using the fake profiles with names such as FN_LePen_2016, the screenshots show how they plan to take to the comments sections of French Facebook pages as well as targeting pro-FN Twitter trends and Reddit posts.
One of their tactics is to fill the comments of popular pages with jokes mocking Les Republicains candidate Francois Fillon - the favourite to beat Le Pen in the crucial runoff vote next May - as well as pro-FN memes.
“They go their [sic] for the news but will be de facto subjected to our meme magic in the comments section” one of their messages read.
"We hit them with our memes, anti-Fillon shitposting".
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