Meta Takes Down Fake Facebook and Instagram Accounts Linked to Pro-U.S. Influence Operation

Meta Platforms on Tuesday said it took down a network of
accounts and pages across Facebook and Instagram that were operated
by people associated with the U.S. military to spread narratives
that depicted the country in a favorable light in the Middle East
and Central Asia.

The network, which originated from the U.S., primarily singled
out Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

The social media giant stated the individuals behind the
activity impersonated the communities they targeted, propagating
content in Arabic, Farsi, and Russian that criticized Iran, China,
and Russia, and floated themes of increased military cooperation
with the U.S.

These narratives spanned “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s
treatment of the Uyghur people, Iran’s influence in the Middle
East, and the support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by
Russia and China,” Meta said^[1]
in its Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report.

Content related to the COVID-19 pandemic was also posted, some
of which were taken down for violating its misinformation policy,
the company added.

The bogus accounts also used profile photos possibly created
using machine learning techniques like generative adversarial
networks (GANs^[2]) and posted during
Eastern Standard Time (EST) rather than during working hours in the
targeted nations.

As many as 39 Facebook accounts, 16 Pages, two Groups, and 26
accounts on Instagram were found engaging in coordinated
inauthentic behavior. The operation further extended to other
platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte, and
Odnoklassniki.

However, the efforts appear to have been largely unsuccessful.
“The majority of this operation’s posts had little to no engagement
from authentic communities,” Meta said.

Details about the campaign first came to light earlier this
August when researchers from Graphika and the Stanford Internet
Observatory uncovered^[3]
the use of multiple social media services to promote pro-Western
narratives.

“These campaigns consistently advanced narratives promoting the
interests of the United States and its allies while opposing
countries including Russia, China, and Iran,” the Stanford Internet
Observatory noted, calling it the “most extensive case of covert
pro-Western influence operations on social media.”

The disclosure comes nearly two months after Meta dismantled^[4]
two separate clusters from China and Russia for running information
operations that sought to manipulate public discourse on the
platforms.