In its latest issue of the quarterly “Adversarial Threat” report, Facebook parent Meta said it took down a network of 4789 China-based fake and misleading accounts. This comes as two major world democracies—India and the United States are set to hold elections next year.
These fake accounts, posing as Americans and Indians, were actively involved in propagating misleading information about sensitive issues pertaining to US politics, US-China relations, and Indian politics.
In its report, Meta stated that China now ranks as the third-largest geographical source of such deceptive networks carrying out what Meta calls “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, while Russia and Iran continue to lead.
“We removed 13 accounts and seven Groups in China that targeted primarily India and the Tibet region and, to a lesser extent, the United States. This small network operated fictitious personas on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) posing as journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. We found this activity as part of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the region,” the report reads.
The report underscored that these China-based fake accounts posing as journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders etc posted the same propaganda content on both Facebook and Elon Musk-owned X. In a bid to appear authentic, these false accounts commented on and shared each other’s posts.
According to the report, these accounts posted content in English and sometimes in Hindi and Chinese about the regional news, food, culture and general things in Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh. The Tibet-centric accounts pretended to be “pro-independence activists” accusing exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and his supporters of corruption and paedophilia, much in line with the Chinese government’s assertions. The report adds that the Arunachal Pradesh-focused accounts in general lauded the Indian army, athletes, etc however, they accused the government of being corrupt and backing the ethnic violence in Manipur. Apparently, the pro-Indian army and other positive content posted by such accounts was only to appear authentic and patriotic Indians who are only against the government and its alleged backing of Manipur violence.
Another notable point in the report is that some of these now-removed accounts posed as Americans and “shared links to articles from mainstream US media like HuffPost, Breitbart, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News.”
Meta found 13 such accounts active on both Facebook and Instagram and 7 groups involved in coordinated inauthentic behaviour. One of the seven marked groups had around 1400 member accounts.
Accounts based in China influencing public opinion in the United States
According to the report, the deceptive Chinese network was active in influencing opinion on several issues in the United States including abortion, culture war issues, and aid for Ukraine. The accounts shared and liked each other’s posts while using profile images and identities stolen from authentic users globally. Notably, some of the content seemed to have been lifted directly from X.
Some of the accounts’ activity included copying verbatim posts from US politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, such as Nancy Pelosi, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Gottheimer, Ron DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan. Meta highlighted the network’s lack of a cohesive ideological orientation.
“This can be done to obfuscate the fact they are a direct ‘copypaste’ or to exacerbate already existing tensions in the target countries. It can also be an attempt to promote narratives that the operators support, or to build an initial audience to be targeted with other narratives later,” the report stated.
The report pointed out that while the content shared by these CIB (Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour) networks usually refers to factual news stories, Meta stated that its primary objective is to alter public opinion, foment discord, and artificially bolster particular opinions.
Increasingly, CIB networks are dispersing their assets and infrastructure over multiple internet surfaces, rather than concentrating their activity and coordination in one point of operation.
Meta highlighted “Spamouflage”, the China-based operation as a prime example of such CIB networks. “It was seen running on 50+ platforms, and it primarily seeded content on blogging platforms and forums like Medium, Reddit and Quora before sharing links to that content on ours,” Meta stated.
Notably, Meta has been investing in artificial intelligence (AI), and one of its main applications is to assist in identifying content, particularly computer-generated media, that may violate company standards. According to Meta, around 100 independent fact-checking partners will help in reviewing any dubious AI-generated content.
“While the use of AI by known threat actors we’ve seen so far has been limited and not very effective, we want to remain vigilant and prepare to respond as their tactics evolve,” stated the report.
Besides the major Chinese CIB network, Meta uncovered another network from Russia posting primarily in English about the invasion of Ukraine and promoting Telegram channels. The report emphasised that Russian networks, which had already been investigated since the 2016 election, have moved their focus to the Ukraine crisis, aiming to weaken international support for Kyiv.
