Meta disrupted China-based propaganda machine before it reached many Americans

Now today, Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, shared a report detailing the steps it took to remove the first "Chinese-origin influence operation" that Meta has identified attempting "to target US domestic politics ahead of the 2022 midterms.".

In the press release, Meta Global Threat Intelligence Lead Ben Nimmo joined Meta Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich in describing the operation as initiated by a "small network." They said that between fall 2021 and September 2022, there were four "largely separate and short-lived" efforts launched by clusters of "around half a dozen" China-based accounts, which targeted both US-based conservatives and liberals using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

In total, Meta removed "81 Facebook accounts, eight pages, one group, and two accounts on Instagram." Meta estimated approximately 250 accounts joined the group, 20 accounts followed one or more Pages, and fewer than 10 accounts followed one or both Instagram accounts.

What gets an account removed is not, Meta said, "what they post or whether they're foreign or domestic," but whether the network would collapse without the fake accounts propping it up.

Described as the largest Russian network of its kind that Meta has "disrupted since the war in Ukraine began," this second operation targeted users based in "primarily Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine, and the UK." Its online presence spanned 1,633 Facebook accounts, 703 Facebook pages, one Facebook group, and 29 accounts on Instagram." The reach was limited to 4,000 accounts following at least one page, fewer than 10 accounts joining the group, and 1,500 accounts following at least one Instagram account.

For their report, SIO evaluated Meta and Twitter data covering a period of five years of pro-Western covert influence operations, which the platforms had already jointly removed.

To complete its analysis, SIO worked with the social media analytics firm Graphika to identify "an interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia," as well as narratives that heavily criticized Russia, China, and Iran.

Twitter's dataset "covered 299,566 tweets by 146 accounts between March 2012 and February 2022," but Meta's was limited to "39 Facebook profiles, 16 pages, two groups, and 26 Instagram accounts active from 2017 to July 2022." Combining the datasets left SIO with five years' worth of cross-platform activities from the influence operations to analyze.

"The assets identified by Twitter and Meta created fake personas with GAN-generated faces, posed as independent media outlets, leveraged memes and short-form videos, attempted to start hashtag campaigns, and launched online petitions: all tactics observed in past operations by other actors," SIO's report said