Facebook for news and information (CIEP, 2014). As of May 2020, active Facebook usership was around 68%, compared to 18% for Pinterest and 10% for YouTube (Global Stats, 2020). Twitter and Instagram trail far behind with under 2% (Global Stats, 2020). Although the general public uses Facebook rather than Twitter, Costa Rican politicians and political activists do have Twitter accounts. One interviewee explained that political activists rely on Twitter to move their issues persistently into the spotlight, so that politicians perceive them not as a fringe debate but as a real social concern: “Despite low Twitter usage, repetition pays to affect politicians’ perception of the public mood.”29 More recently, attempts by political actors to disinform have moved to WhatsApp and include voice messages and memes.30 WhatsApp is used by 83% of the population (Latinobarómetro, 2018). According to research by La Nación, 76% of the false news items detected during the 2018 election were distributed via Facebook, 10% appeared in Facebook and WhatsApp, 8% was only shared via WhatsApp, and 6% were on Twitter (Hidalgo, 2019). By July 2019, more than half of all false news identified by La Nación circulated via WhatsApp (Arias Retana, 2019c). To slow the dissemination of false information, WhatsApp has responded with numerous revisions to its mechanics and its terms of use. Until 2018, WhatsApp users had been able to forward a message to 250 groups at once. Given the rapid spread of fake news in personal communications, this was subsequently reduced to 20. In 2019, WhatsApp tightened these limits further, initially to 5 and in April 2020, the company announced that users who receive a frequently forwarded message would only be able to share it to one chat at a time (Hern, 2020). The effect of such policies in Costa Rica remains to be seen. One interviewee mentioned: “WhatsApp is a private messaging system, not social media. It is private and hidden. Hence, the WhatsApp fake news phenomenon is a threat that can only be stemmed with greater digital literacy.”31 Table 2 summarizes the observed strategies, tools and techniques of social media manipulation in Costa Rica. Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Costa Rica Account Types Messaging and Valence Content and Platforms Communication Strategies Human Polarization strategies Facebook pages, Facebook, including attacks on disinfo/misinfo websites, WhatsApp, government reforms, including news websites Twitter immigration, diversity and linked to political parties, inclusion, and religious memes, misleading photos values/human rights/social or images from elsewhere issues, Trolling and Harassment, Defamation attempts/accusations of corruption 92