Social media posts from political parties and businesses in Germany all got a boost from a company that paid people to engage with online content, Eurasia Diary reports citing Deutsche Welle.
Since 2012, a list of around 89,000 social media posts and websites benefited from the work of Magdeburg-based company "Paid Likes," which pays an army of internet users to like requested posts across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, reported German public broadcasters WDR, NDR and the daily Süddeutscher Zeitung (SZ) on Wednesday.
The list of links included 17 each from the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) and the coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and its Bavarian sister party. Germany's Social Democrats' had 14 posts on the list while and the far-right Alternative for Germany had 11.
Roman Müller-Böhm, the 27-year-old chairman of FDP Oberhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia, who campaigns for consumer protection on the internet, was discovered to have paid for likes on more than 40 posts on both his Facebook and Instagram accounts during 2018.
He declined to comment to the news outlets.