shows that both political parties and private companies have ignored existing legal requirements in their digital advertising efforts, with companies being prohibited from selling private data bases in Costa Rica. Cyber troop activity in Costa Rica has been higher in election periods, and most false news during the 2018 campaign focused on corruption and religion (Hidalgo, 2019). However, it did not cease after the election. Cyber troop activity has continued to focus on polarizing public opinion on diversity and inclusion issues, has focused on boycotting government reforms, and has followed an anti-immigrant discourse. One of the most investigated cases was a scandal directedly linked to the NR, a party that was founded by Fabricio Alvarado after breaking away from the NPR in October 2018. The NR (although not officially recognized as a party by Costa Rica’s Parliament) currently has six representatives in the legislature. They include Jonathan Prendas, whose brother Francisco Prendas became the president of the party. The scandal concerned the false claim published on the webpage diariolacarta.com (owned by Francisco Prenda’s communication firm OBS and founded in May 2019) that the government would raise VAT from 13% to 16% in July 2019 (Sequeira and Chinchilla Cerdas, 2019). The two Prendas brothers and Fabricio Alvarado subsequently shared the link to the false claim via their social media platforms, from which it was passed on more than 1,100 times by their followers (Cerdas, Sequeira and Oviedo, 2019). Their claim was explosive, even though identified as false by Costa Rica’s Treasury and the Government. It came at a time when the country was paralyzed by strikes relating to the implementation of the tax reforms that the Costa Rian Parliament had passed in December 2018 to help address a deep fiscal crisis. The case sparked a fierce parliamentary debate about the destabilizing effects of fake news in Costa Rica’s democracy and the involvement of political parties in the spread of false news. Jonathan Prendas defended himself by accusing the government of attacking their nascent media organization and arguing that other political parties were doing the same. Civil Society Organizations and Individuals Civil society organizations as well as individual citizens joined the disinformation campaign surrounding the country’s reform efforts. Albino Vargas, the Secretary General of Costa Rica’s civil servant trade union (ANEP) also shared the false Diario la Carta news via Twitter to mobilize his base to strike against the government.14 Vargas further rallied secondary students on false claims related, for example, to diversity and inclusion issues and dual education which were also spread via Facebook by the National Educators Association (ANDE). 15 The student leader who organized secondary students via Facebook to join the strikes and stage protests was a former intern of Jonathan Prendas (Cerdas, 2019). The strikes led to the closure of more than 100 secondary schools and forced out the education minister, Edgar Mora. Mora had to resign, inter alia, given the widespread false information that the government would replace separate bathrooms for girls and boys in schools with gender neutral common bathrooms, the creation of a “diversity day” which was claimed would advocate homosexual relationships between children, and over the false claim that the government’s new dual education program would force students to work for companies without pay or health insurance. The incident shows how politicians and civil society organizations have used citizens’ digital illiteracy to advance their political goals through the deliberate spread of disinformation. Alarmingly, a survey conducted by the University of Costa Rica concluded that two of every ten Costa Ricans 88