“Between July 31 and Aug. 11, 2026, between 60 and 90 accounts on the social media platform X published content in two successive waves that appropriated the logos, typography and editorial formats of eight Ecuadorian news outlets: Primicias, Ecuavisa (Ecuavisa Play), El Comercio, Radio Pichincha, TC Televisión, Teleamazonas, Radio Centro and La Hora. This was revealed by Ecuador Chequea(opens in new tab) in an investigation published Aug. 11, 2026.
The first wave, organized under the hashtag #ChaoCorreismo, began July 31 and intensified on Aug. 3 and 4, coinciding with a ruling by the Criminal Guarantees Court sentencing Guayaquil Mayor Aquiles Álvarez to three years in prison for failing to comply with electronic monitoring requirements in a case known as ‘Grillete.’ According to Ecuador Chequea, the hashtag had been inactive until then.
The second wave, under the hashtag #AQuitoYaNoLoEspian, started on Aug. 10, one day after the national government announced that the Interior Ministry would take control of between 632 and 800 cameras belonging to Quito’s Strategic Command Center. President Daniel Noboa said the state was ‘taking control of video surveillance … not spy networks.’
[…]
The systematic appropriation of news media logos, documented repeatedly since 2024, poses a risk to Ecuador’s information ecosystem: It erodes public trust in verified journalistic sources, makes it harder to distinguish genuine content from disinformation, and exposes affected media outlets to reputational damage without any editorial responsibility on their part.”
Read the original statement (in Spanish)
This statement was translated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera
