One of the problems in the digital space is vast groups of fake accounts on social media. These accounts can be used for different purposes: to get a lot of likes, for example, or to make it seem like your company or event has many followers. After all, followers attract followers on social media. They can help to obtain positive Amazon reviews. Another reason is to spread political propaganda and disinformation, troll, block, or disrupt real people’s discussions.

An online Hessian army

In The Possibility of An Army, the Dutch internet artist Constant Dullaart created an army of thousands of fake Facebook profiles. She gave them the names of long-dead soldiers from the late 18th century from the small German state Hessen-Kassel. Hessians made up many German troops that the British paid for during the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century. Hessen-Kassel had always been poor but simultaneously lay between two powerful states. The Hessen-Kassel soldiers came to America through soldier trade: small German states traded their soldiers to fight for the highest bidder.

Contemporary battles

Flash-forward to contemporary times, where we find ourselves in the situation that also digital space is a battlefield for political conflicts. Especially since the American elections of 2016, online propaganda has been a topic of discussion. But it was already years before that Constant Dullaart played cleverly with the idea of fake political accounts by creating The Possibility of An Army, going to battle against Facebook itself.

Dullaart didn’t only expose Facebook’s policies. This online Hessian army also unraveled the market for fake accounts and how fake accounts move around in the digital space.

Disarming Facebook

Constant Dullaart sees Facebook primarily as an American company. The soldiers in Dullaart’s Facebook army each had the name of actual soldiers from Hesse that fought in the American civil war.

They came to America with a little context: to fight, kill, and die in a war that was not theirs. They appeared, they fought, and after the war, they disappeared again. And also, the fake accounts of the army of Hessian soldiers by Constant Dullaart might fade over time as if they’d never been there in the first place.

Facebook has developed techniques to detect non-human activity, like fake accounts and bots. It is, therefore, possible that Facebook itself disarms (or better: already disarmed) them.