We start with a question

How Claims of Sheikh Hasina’s Return Spread Across Facebook?

Sometimes, the same claim appeared on a Page, then on a profile a few minutes later, and then spread through another Page to multiple groups. In another case, text published on one Page was posted to 72 groups by another account in just 8 minutes and 47 seconds.

FIRST CLUE

19 May 2025

The Same Claim, Minutes Apart

12 posts

At 10:25 PM, Nilima Nila posted that Sheikh Hasina would return soon. Within minutes, the same or similar claim appeared on other profiles and Pages. Across 19 and 20 May, we found 12 such posts—9 from profiles and 3 from Pages.

THE QUESTION CHANGED

What we first thought

Were a few large accounts driving the spread?

But the most-viewed posts and the posts distributed most rapidly were not coming from the same places.

So how were these messages actually spreading?

Large audiencePosts from some accounts received millions of views.

Repeated claimsThe same or similar text appeared repeatedly across different Pages and profiles.

Rapid distributionSome accounts posted the same text to many Facebook groups within a very short period.

SEE THE EVIDENCE

Inspect the evidence

See the records, data and primary sources behind the investigations.

The key question

The key question then became: Were the most-viewed accounts also the ones spreading the messages most widely?

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