Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Earth Social Networks The Internet

How Social Media Spurred a Refugee Crisis Between Spain and Morocco (nytimes.com) 72

Posted by BeauHD from the real-world-consequences dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Two days before tens of thousands of migrants surged into Ceuta, one of Spain's enclaves on Morocco's northern coast, a newspaper there posted a video on TikTok and Instagram showing two young women walking in the city in wet suits, their hair still damp. The posts didn't say so explicitly, but the implication was clear: The women had just swum across the border from Morocco. "Ceuta can't take it anymore," the newspaper, El Faro de Ceuta, declared in the posts. On the other side of the border, the video resonated very differently. Cropped and reposted in Arabic, the video seemed like an invitation. The women were smiling, flashing peace signs and thumbs up and, most of all, walking around freely. The video seemed to legitimize rumors that had percolated for weeks on social media suggesting that a recent ruling by Spain's Supreme Court meant migrants who arrived illegally by sea could stay in the country. As one account on Facebook put it, falsely, "Ceuta is turning into an open gate," when in fact migrants still faced expulsion after a judicial review. The responses to the posts about the swimmers were a critical part of a cascade of disinformation that experts described as one of the starkest instances in which social media contributed directly to a real-world tragedy.

How Social Media Spurred a Refugee Crisis Between Spain and Morocco More | Reply

How Social Media Spurred a Refugee Crisis Between Spain and Morocco

Comments Filter:

  • Social engineering. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by engineer37 ( 6205042 ) on Thursday August 13, 2026 @03:20AM (#66286718)
    This is a social engineering tactic: create a video to stir up anti-immigrant feelings in one country, then turn around and use the same video to encourage immigration to the country that you just encouraged anti-immigrant feelings in, with the resulting political crisis being the goal.

    I don't want to dive into politics here, my goal with posting is to point out that this was an intentional social engineering tactic used to cause this situation, and it was wildly effective. One video caused a political crisis in multiple countries including infighting between those countries. Again, putting the politics aside, think about the cost effectiveness of this tactic. You produce one video, pay maybe two actors, maybe some camera people, and for the price of a small TV ad you cause a political crisis involving multiple countries, including undermining or worsening some relationships between countries.

    Personally, I feel like this is a lot of what the internet is used for these days, and it kinda depresses me. I remember when the internet was just people with their own little webpages posting random crap. Today, it's a sophisticated tool used for propaganda, conflicts between countries, disinformation, you name it. It's not just countries doing this sort of thing, but companies too. Everyone is trying to manipulate your opinion, and the opinions of entire populations. Gone are the days when the internet was by people, for people. Now it's just a tool used for stuff like this.
    • The question is who and why? What if it was a test and not some random event? Spanish government failed its citizens. 50,000 military-age men invaded Spanish enclave with no warning or resistance. Where was intelligence services, border security, army? Europe has hard questions to answer of it it is actually ready to defend itself.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by pjt33 ( 739471 )

        Key word: "enclave". It's a small city separated from the rest of Spain by 200km (120 miles) of sea. I have a Spanish friend who thinks that Morocco is cozying up to the US with the goal of getting US support for it to invade Ceuta and Melilla: except for the Ceutans and Melillans, the main impact on Spaniards would be the propaganda it would unleash. It's not some kind of Maginot line which when breached leaves open a land route to the rest of the country. So what do you think would be a proportionate depl

        • It's an exclave, isn't it? But I digress. Spain's not in Trump's good books at the moment because of the way they handled Trump's war on Iran and failing to meet their NATO spending commitments. It doesn't help that Spain is "socialist" too. It would be just like Trump to backstab an ally. See how they recently leaked reconsidering their position on the Falkland Islands after getting pissed of with the UK. No doubt Morocco sees an opportunity. Talking of the UK, I find Spain's position on Gibraltar t

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dinfinity ( 2300094 )

        Spanish government failed its citizens.

        Nonsense. Except from the right-wing vultures abusing the images for politics and undermining EU unity (which was the intent of this campaign), there were no consequences Spain could have prevented with the border security or army. In no time, pretty much all those who had crossed were back in Morocco and everything was back to normal.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by nanoakron ( 234907 )

          Well this is just untrue.

          The migrants are not all back in Morocco, some have landed on mainland Spain, and in the meantime have committed theft, assaults and rapes.

          This is not some kumbaya peaceful action, this was a literal invasion (50,000 people entering a territory with a population of 80,000) and should have been met with force.

        • Spanish government failed its citizens.

          Nonsense. Except from the right-wing vultures abusing the images for politics and undermining EU unity (which was the intent of this campaign), there were no consequences Spain could have prevented with the border security or army. In no time, pretty much all those who had crossed were back in Morocco and everything was back to normal.

          Jesus Christ, WTF are you talking about? Over 100 people are dead.

      • Re:Social engineering. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Thursday August 13, 2026 @07:40AM (#66286916)

        The question is who and why? What if it was a test and not some random event?

        here are some clues:

        this is not an unprecedented event, it has happened in the past but never at this scale.

        i've seen images of trucks packed with migrants unloading them near the border, and moroccan border policie directing them towards the crossing. even if those images were out of context, it is simply not plausible that around 60.000 people could traverse morocco and approach the border without moroccan authorities noticing and at least warning their spanish counterparts. so at the very least morocco has been acquiescent.

        also note that the vast majority of migrants weren't moroccan, they came from far further south.

        so this could have been morocco just "offloading" a migration problem to spain, either just to avoid dealing with it or as a political move or signal.

        over the past months, though, the current spanish government had been the most critic country in europe of israel's actions in gaza/lebannon and us attacks on iran, refusing to let us military bases to be involved in them. these actions were likely just aimed at appeasing domestic public opinion, overwhelmingly so in the "left", but this nevertheless caused the ires of zionists both in israel and the us, from protests and threats by ambassadors to trump-social rage sprees and threats.

        mid july the "u.s. house appropriations committee report" stated out of the blue that "ceuta and melilla are located in moroccan territory" and "ecouraged diplomatic engagement between morocco and spain on their future status". these statements caused quite a bit of ruckus in spain but were later "clarified and retracted".

        during the events, several high profile zionist accounts (government, mossad, celebrities) mocked spain on social media over these developments.

        while morocco and spain have a long history of tensions themselves the moroccan subservience to usa and israel is also well known, so it isn't at all implausible that in this case they acted on their request. ofc there is no proof of that.

        also note that ceuta is not included in shengen, and influx of migrants into ceuta does not mean that they can simply pour into europe. they still have to cross the strait and cross the spanish border. the small portion of them that didn't voluntarily head back to morocco the next day are (last i checked) still stranded in ceuta.

        (which means that meloni's move to close italy's borders was just political theatre ... this might be unrelated opportunism, but could as well have been suggested by other interested parties)

        • and approach the border without moroccan authorities noticing and at least warning their spanish counterparts

          Question: Why would they care?
          Followup question: What makes you think they didn't warn their Spanish counterparts?
          Final bonus question: What makes you think any of that has any impact on the outcome?

          If you want to take pictures out of context, there's plenty of pictures of what happened at the border: On the Spanish side all the border agents were there, standing there in full force unable to do anything. How many people do you think make up the border guard there, and what do you think they were going to d

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by znrt ( 2424692 )

            What makes you think they didn't warn their Spanish counterparts?

            guardia civil, policia nacional and gobierno de ceuta have said so. now, they might be lying to save face but even then (or precisely then) it is very obvious that they were caught unprepared, and diplomatic rows about this continue to this point.

            ofc you probably know better.

            If you want to take pictures out of context

            not more than you taking my words out of context, if not directly misrepresenting them. i said that those pictures could be being taken out of context. there's still a load of them.

            On the Spanish side all the border agents were there, standing there in full force unable to do anything.

            they were explicitly told not to use force. on the last

          • If you want to take pictures out of context, there's plenty of pictures of what happened at the border: On the Spanish side all the border agents were there, standing there in full force unable to do anything. How many people do you think make up the border guard there, and what do you think they were going to do with an influx of 50000 people? Shoot them? Prevent people who just spent 5km swimming (some didn't make it and drowned) from coming out of the water?

            You come in force and physically stop them and provide suitable transportation back to where they came from. More importantly is to make it known you won't tolerate invasion in advance so this shit doesn't take place to begin with.

            Did you learn nothing from Gandhi?

            Did you learn nothing from Merkel who got thousands of people killed with her come to Germany stunt in 2015? Weakness gets people killed, in this particular case over 100 people died to say nothing of a terrorized local population.

      • Ceuta is a small island off the coast of Africa. It is Spanish territory -but no where near Spain. There are no troops, there is barely a police force on the island.

        The invasion consisted of thousands of people going for a short swim... and then going back home in a day or two when they realized that they weren't going to be taken to Spain and given Spanish/EU citizenship. They voluntarily walked back across the bridge to Morocco.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      So the problem is the video of the invasion, not the invasion itself. Got it.

      • Well yes the "invasion" was a result of the video. Also the invasion wasn't actually a problem. Most of the people went home voluntarily after they realised the videos led them there under false pretences. 50000 people crossed the border, only 5-7% are still there and are getting nowhere, and 0 ended up invading the EU free movement area.

        So yeah the "invasion" itself isn't a problem at all.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      One video caused a political crisis in multiple countries including infighting between those countries.

      No it didn't. It was at best a contributing factor. The actual infighting between countries is caused by multiple things including a rise in nationalism and racism along with a political system that rewards bullshit if that bullshit vilifies someone who your supporting base has been led to believe is the source of all evil.

      You can look to the EU crisis talks shortly after this incident. The only people who "fought" were nationalistic arseholes hoping to win political points by spreading lies. E.g. Italy (an

      • What is wrong with being nationalistic? The EU is a very loose federation of nation states, each with its own defense force, police etc and the states on the periphery are responsible for gaurding the external borders. Spain, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece etc all have huge border fences that put the old Iron Curtain to shame.

        • What is wrong with being nationalistic?

          You and I are not using the word nationalistic the same way. There's nothing wrong with looking out for yourself. There's everything wrong with doing it to the detriment of all connection elsewhere.

          You want to promote local businesses, great. You want to promote local businesses but only if they are run by people with your skin colour or people who's grandparents were born there you can fuck all the way off.

          The entire concept of national borders is stupid. It plays the human race against each other as a lot

          • The entire concept of national borders is stupid. It plays the human race against each other as a lottery of where you born, as if there isn't enough inequality in the world.
            Oh you're one of those "magic soil" retards. If you don't believe in national borders, then you don't believe in Nations, which raises several questions including how do you feel large groups of people should govern themselves, and how does one interact with said government?
            Sincerely: "an immigrant" (just one of those lucky enough t

    • This is a social engineering tactic: create a video to stir up anti-immigrant feelings in one country, then turn around and use the same video to encourage immigration to the country that you just encouraged anti-immigrant feelings in, with the resulting political crisis being the goal. I don't want to dive into politics here, my goal with posting is to point out that this was an intentional social engineering tactic used to cause this situation, and it was wildly effective. One video caused a political crisis in multiple countries including infighting between those countries. Again, putting the politics aside, think about the cost effectiveness of this tactic. You produce one video, pay maybe two actors, maybe some camera people, and for the price of a small TV ad you cause a political crisis involving multiple countries, including undermining or worsening some relationships between countries. Personally, I feel like this is a lot of what the internet is used for these days, and it kinda depresses me. I remember when the internet was just people with their own little webpages posting random crap. Today, it's a sophisticated tool used for propaganda, conflicts between countries, disinformation, you name it. It's not just countries doing this sort of thing, but companies too. Everyone is trying to manipulate your opinion, and the opinions of entire populations. Gone are the days when the internet was by people, for people. Now it's just a tool used for stuff like this.

      We weren't ready for it. The information age required a level of collective intelligence that we may have been close to possessing at some point right before it kicked into full swing, but that intelligence was being intentionally lowered in the USA for certain, and likely a few other modern countries. We didn't need the world to lose their minds up-front to arrive where we are. We just needed enough to let the momentum build, to treat as lab monkeys to test the tech on, to perfect the invasive nature of it

    • Personally, I feel like this is a lot of what the internet is used for these days, and it kinda depresses me. I remember when the internet was just people with their own little webpages posting random crap. Today, it's a sophisticated tool used for propaganda, conflicts between countries, disinformation, you name it. It's not just countries doing this sort of thing, but companies too. Everyone is trying to manipulate your opinion, and the opinions of entire populations. Gone are the days when the internet was by people, for people. Now it's just a tool used for stuff like this.

      The problem is that the Internet was inevitably going to (d)evolve this way no matter what the techno-utopians promised in the 1990s. The moment any communications medium shows the ability to convince / manipulate humans to do something, and especially convince humans to send money or allocate resources differently, interests from across the spectrum from state actors (for both legitimate and illegitimate) to criminal organizations were inevitably going to flood in. It is human nature.

    • The people behind Cambridge Analytica didn't go away. They just let one company fold and moved on. How many other entities are involved in the same manipulation via social media?

      I suspect that the same people who are bankrolling Nigel Farage and others created the social media storm that caused the mass storming of Ceuta.

  • Spain's politicians did indeed tacitly invite illegal immigrants. Heck, maybe not so tacitly.

    Like all of that ilk, they want it both ways - they want to say all the shibboleths, to sound oh so welcoming, blah blah. But they don't want to take responsibility when the "migrants" actually take them up on it. Must be social media's fault!

    • Sure, things are true because you say they are. Back in reality:
      a) No they didn't,
      b) This incident was spurred on by something completely unrelated to politicians (I know Americans no longer understand the concepts of separation of powers in government since they have a king now, but Spain is still a democracy).
      c) Spain made it clear there's no path to the EU for said migrants and virtually all of them went back.

      But congratulations, you're precisely that social media bullshit that this article is talking ab

  • These things happen.

  • We don't blame SMTP when we get spam... Don't blame social media when Israel uses it to get revenge. https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]

Slashdot Top Deals

Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker

Close