Facebook: China and Russia Behind Massive Disinformation Campaigns
China and Russia are responsible for the largest cross-platform misinformation operations to date, announced Facebook parent company Meta on Tuesday.
Combined, the operations targeted more than 50 platforms and forums including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, Pinterest, Reddit, and Quora.
The disinformation was aimed at audiences in the US, Taiwan, Australia, Japan, Israel, and the United Kingdom as well as Chinese-speaking communities living outside of China. The goal was to improve the perception of China’s human rights record and undermine international support for Ukraine.
“The Chinese operation is the largest online influence operations that we know of in the world today,” said Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead. “What it’s doing is posting articles and cartoons and videos that basically praise China, criticize the United States and Western countries, and then criticize anybody who criticizes the Chinese government.” The Chinese operation was nicknamed ‘spamouflage’ for its use of spam to make its content appear authentic.
Mr. Nimmo has helped Meta defeat more than 200 covert influence operations in recent years and was himself the target of an attack in 2017 when Russian bots on Twitter proclaimed him dead.
“It was a crude way, I think, of trying to intimidate us and to scare us off, but the nice thing about reading about your own death on the internet is that you can check your pulse and you know, that’s not true. So, it was a short-term attempt at harassment, but it didn’t go very far.”
To date, shutting down spamouflage has involved closing 8,600 Facebook accounts, 954 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook groups, 15 Instagram accounts, and “many, many more accounts” across other platforms and social media services. The collective following of those accounts was estimated at 561,000 individuals – many of them also fake.
According to Nimmo, the campaign was a single operation run by individuals throughout China that were sharing internet infrastructure – including members of Chinese law enforcement. The operation was uncovered through a series of mistakes, including English articles with Chinese headlines and vice versa.
The operation, which dates back to 2019 or earlier, also promoted false content opposing the Trump Administration and the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and supporting China’s response to COVID. Spamouflage even involved the creation of AI-generated news anchors who praised the Chinese Communist Party.
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Russia’s disinformation campaign, known as Doppelgänger, was discovered in September 2022 and has been described by Meta as the “largest and most aggressively persistent” operation of this kind from Russia since 2017.
Shutting it down has involved removing thousands of fake accounts and pages connected to Meta and blocking more than 2,000 domains from being shared on Facebook and Instagram.
Doppelgänger focused on the production of news content designed to mimic actual sources including Fox News, The Washington Post, the UK’s The Guardian, and Germany’s Der Spiegel.
Doppelgänger has been linked to two Russian companies – a PR firm and an IT company – both of which have been sanctioned by the EU. The campaign has also attempted to impersonate NATO, the German police, the French Foreign Ministry, and the Polish and Ukrainian governments.
As noted in Meta’s report, a majority of the fake news produced by China and Russia seemed only to reach fake users because it was so obviously fake. For example, Nimmo has seen Russia post ‘stop supporting Ukraine’ content on a website titled EarlyGonorrhoeaSigns.com.
‘Sometimes you have to wonder if these people are working towards an actual goal or if they are just trying to show the people who are paying them that they’re posting lots of content,’ notes Nimmo. Even so, it’s important to stay vigilant. Disinformation campaigns of this magnitude generally “try to come back” even after they are discovered; “if not on our platforms – then somewhere else.”
Author’s Note: China and Russia rarely make mistakes. If these campaigns were exposed due to them making mistakes, it is likely that they wanted to be caught. Perhaps what Meta has identified here are campaigns designed to distract from the real attacks.
As noted in the third article linked below, it is also important to take into account Facebook’s longstanding political bias and consider the possibility that this investigation is designed in part to distract the public from its own misdeeds.
Sources:
China, Russia behind largest cross-platform misinformation operation, Meta report finds
Meta says Chinese, Russian influence operations are among the biggest it’s taken down
FACEBOOK: PRO-CHINESE INFLUENCE OPERATION WAS THE LARGEST IN HISTORY
How rich is this? Meta accusing others of disinformation, they are the epitome of disinformation.
So Meta knows they would not be found out unless they wanted to be found out.
Yet it was years and years of Russia Collusion for Trump.
PULL the PLUG on all of it!
Under the guise of: people think the weirdest things, Alice says: “China and Russia rarely make mistakes.” Where the heck can that come from and can Alice say: Ukraine? Covid? What statistical evidence does Alice has of this? Where does such an idea even come from? But wait, there’s more: “If these campaigns were exposed due to them making mistakes, it is likely that they wanted to be caught” which makes even less sense by seemingly putting China and Russia together on this, acting as if in common cause? “Perhaps what Meta has identified here are campaigns designed to distract from the real attacks.” And perhaps not. And perhaps something else. Perhaps. Let me see if I get it; both rarely makes mistakes, if they made a mistake, they meant it to hide something more nefarious. Alice, if they never make mistakes, then why would they go the long way around the barn if they would never make the mistake of being caught to begin with? Your words, your thoughts. I know you won’t explain your “brilliance,” leaving only with stupidity of the nth degree..
But wait, even more: “As noted in the third article linked below, it is also important to take into account Facebook’s longstanding political bias and consider the possibility that this investigation is designed in part to distract the public from its own misdeeds.” So now META is orchestrating this upon both China and Russia who never make mistakes as META’s own plot that they convinced .Chinrussia to be part of. Wow, we gonna need a bigger barn. Or consider the possibility that Alice, as she has oft shown in the past, does not have a clue but is willing to speculate wildly, without foundation, against her targets de jure even if her logic looks like a mobius strip.
But Remnant considers that Meta is behind it all because they are the biggest disinformation abusers and Darren says how can that be since Meta only gets caught if they want to and “it was years and years of Russia Collusion for Trump.” That’s what I said, it was years of Russia collusion for Trump. Damned Congress did not believe. Thanks for agreeing Darren. And then he desires to pull the plug on free speech.
What a whacky world.