MANAGUA, NICARAGUA \u2014<\/strong> Less than a week before Nicaragua\u2019s presidential election, social media giant Facebook deleted the accounts of hundreds of the country\u2019s top news outlets, journalists and activists, all of whom supported the ruling left-wing Sandinista government, a top Washington target for regime change.<\/p>\n Facebook claims<\/a> that these accounts were bots engaged in \u201cinauthentic behavior.\u201d Considering that around half of the country<\/a> uses the platform for news and entertainment, the decision could barely have been more heavy-handed and intrusive. However, early reports show that if their goal was to swing the result, it has failed badly and the Sandinistas have achieved an overwhelming victory.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is appalling interference by Facebook in particular (which is the most popular social media outlet in Nicaragua). They allege that they\u2019ve stopped a government-deployed troll farm but what they have actually done is to close accounts of ordinary Sandinista activists, particularly young people, often with many followers,\u201d John Perry, a journalist living in the city of Masaya, told MintPress<\/em>.<\/p>\n Worse still, after dozens of Sandinistas took to Twitter to record video messages proving they were real people being censored, their accounts were systematically deleted as well, in what Managua-based journalist Ben Norton<\/a> described<\/a> as a Silicon Valley \u201cdouble-tap strike.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese are accounts that average Nicaraguans have come to count on for news and communicating with each other about current events and, in this case, about the election. So it is very troubling that it was obviously targeted against one political group: the Sandinistas,\u201d said Daniel Kovalik<\/a>, a human-rights lawyer and an observer of this weekend\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n Both Perry and Kovalik were of the opinion that it was no coincidence that Facebook had taken action against precisely the group the U.S. government is trying to overthrow.<\/p>\n