Facebook Shuts Down Covert Political ‘Influence Operations’ from Russia and China

Meta Platforms on Tuesday disclosed it took steps to dismantle
two covert influence operations originating from China and Russia
for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) so as to
manipulate public debate.

While the Chinese operation sets its sights on the U.S. and the
Czech Republic, the Russian network primarily targeted Germany,
France, Italy, Ukraine and the U.K. with themes surrounding the
ongoing war in Ukraine.

“The largest and most complex Russian operation we’ve disrupted
since the war in Ukraine began, it ran a sprawling network of over
60 websites impersonating news organizations, as well as accounts
on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram, Twitter, Change.org and
Avaaz, and even LiveJournal,” the social media behemoth said^[1].

The sophisticated Russian activity, which commenced in May 2022,
impersonated mainstream European news outlets like Der Spiegel, The
Guardian, and Bild, not to mention build credibility by creating
fake accounts across several platforms to amplify pro-Russian
narratives.

The campaign demanded both technical and linguistic investment,
as it entailed the use of spoofed websites that churned out content
in over half-a-dozen languages, including English, French, German,
Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Ukrainian. In some instances, the
content was propagated by Russian embassy accounts.

Meta said a number of these fake accounts were flagged and
removed by its automated systems, suggesting an “unusual
combination of sophistication and brute force” that lacked the
careful approach the actors took when designing the rogue websites
to mimic the exact appearance of the real news portals.

As many as 1,633 accounts, 703 Pages, one Group on Facebook and
29 accounts on Instagram were put to use to spread the propaganda,
with the actors spending roughly $105,000 in ads to promote the
articles via the two social media services.

The Chinese influence operation targeting the U.S. and Czechia,
in contrast, was a less expansive network and a largely failed
effort that played out in the form of four separate and short-lived
waves between November 2021 and mid-September 2022. It consisted of
81 Facebook accounts, eight Pages, one Group and two accounts on
Instagram.

“In the United States, it targeted people on both sides of the
political spectrum; in Czechia, this activity was primarily
anti-government, criticizing the state’s support of Ukraine in the
war with Russia and its impact on the Czech economy, using the
criticism to caution against antagonizing China,” the company
noted.

Meta did not disclose any evidence to attribute the fraudulent
accounts to specific individuals or threat actors within the
countries. But the removal of the two networks is the latest in a
series of actions the company has taken in recent years to tackle
misinformation.

The internet giant has also come under fire^[2]
in the past for selectively acting on platform abuse and for taking
an arbitrary method to combat coordinated campaigns affecting
politics across the world, and at times even opting not to be
transparent about its takedowns.