Nurbot accounts use profile pictures stolen from Turkic ethnic minorities in Russia, and Kyrgyz users of VKontakte, as their appearance resembles that of Kazakhs. A typical fake account, under the name Kamshat Umbetova, can be seen in Figure 2. It was noted by Kazakh experts that there are approximately 500,000 active Facebook users in Kazakhstan; meaning any accounts that are recently created, have little organic content, or a low number of mutual friends is treated with suspicion. Thus, the efficacy of these fake accounts is questioned. Fake accounts are acknowledged as a major issue in Kazakhstan. A member of the board of Kazakhstan’s National Association of Professional Social Media Marketing, Kazybek Shaykh, said that “statistical data shows that such [fake] news is often spread through fake accounts” (Tengrinews.kz, 2019). Fake accounts have been set up in the name of leading Kazakh politicians. In April 2019, Prime Minister Askar Mamin’s press office issued a statement saying that the Instagram account ‘mamin_onlain’ was fake, and urged users to only engage in 223