Last month, Islam Tabboush, an Algerian pro-democracy activist with a large digital following, was informed by Facebook that his account had been deactivated. His three pages had over 600,000 followers—two for sharing news and live videos, and one for poetry. The pages had been reported to Facebook on a mass scale by scores of what Tabboush describes as “electronic flies.”

Tabboush, 29, who works as a shop assistant in Algeria’s eastern city of Setif, had received between 20 and 30 Facebook notifications a day telling him that his posts were being reported for “being in violation of community standards”. A message directed him to “visit the Help Center” for more information, or if he thought there had been an error.

“It was a complete interruption of all news, of calls for freedom, of chats with friends and activists on Messenger, of all the pages giving everything new on the scene in these weeks ahead of the elections,” he said. “My spirits are a little low, it’s exhausting [but] I’m still sharing videos on another page using a friend’s account.”

Ahead of Algeria’s presidential election on December 12, the deactivation of Facebook pages run by activists has become commonplace. At the same time, pro-regime social media accounts called “electronic flies”—or “dhoubab elektroni” in Arabic—have flooded platforms like Facebook and Twitter with fake news, fear mongering and calls to vote.