Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced on Tuesday that it had removed thousands of accounts on the social network that were part of a major online Chinese propaganda operation. The campaign was active on more than fifty platforms and forums, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter (renamed X), according to a report published by Meta.
More than 7,700 Facebook accounts and around 15 Instagram accounts are affected, making it the largest account removal action, Meta said.
The group’s security teams were able to determine that the accounts were linked to a series of spam activities (unsolicited messages) that occurred since 2019 and were stopped by Meta.
little audience
The updated network regularly posts positive comments about China and Xinjiang province, where the Uyghur minority is located, while criticizing the United States, the foreign policy of Western countries and those who criticize the Chinese government “including journalists and researchers”, according to the report.
The network was based in China and targeted especially Taiwan, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan, as well as the Chinese-speaking audience abroad. The accounts and pages in question were removed for not respecting the terms of use of the group’s platforms, but they seemed to have little audience and the comments mainly reported false accusations.
The accounts were linked to different locations in China, with a pace of activity that seemed to correspond to business hours. The operation also relied heavily on Medium, Reddit, X, Youtube, Soundcloud, and Vimeo, according to the Meta threat team.
Operation “Doppelganger”
Some of the tactics employed were similar to those of a Russian network updated in 2019, which seems to underscore that these operations learn from each other, according to Ben Nimmo. The Meta report also carried out an analysis of a so-called “Doppelgänger” campaign, discovered a year ago by its teams.
The heart of the operation consisted of making copies, “doppelgänger” in English, of Europe’s main media websites to publish fake news about the war in Ukraine and then distribute it online, explained the head of the Meta Policy. Security, Nathaniel Gleicher.
The companies involved in this campaign, which initially focused mainly on Germany, France and Ukraine, rather than the United States and Israel, were recently sanctioned by the European Union.
It is, he said, the largest and most advanced influence operation in Russia since 2017.
Source: BFM TV
