Facebook stated that it has removed fake Chinese pages focused on disrupting political activity in the United States and many other nations.
A Sliver of the Overall Activity
According to Facebook, the US-focused activity was merely a scrap of the overall activity of the pages and sustained almost no following. The prime focus was Southeast Asia.
The Chinese pages targetted on influencing the November US presidential election. The activity was not directly associated with the government of China, reported USA Today.
Disrupting the Politics in the United States, the Philippines
The fake pages with links to people in China also had an association with the Filipino military that was disturbing the politics of the Philippines and America. The social media platform company stated that all the accounts in two particular networks based in China and the Philippines were taken down for contravening its policy against foreign or government interference. Facebook defines such activity as "coordinated inauthentic behaviour on behalf of a foreign or government entity," reported The Guardian.
Facebook also stated that the removal of the pages was for breaching its policy against "inauthentic behavior."
On US President Donald Trump's Reelection
The company has traced limited Chinese operations calculated to both help and hurt US President Donald Trump's reelection chances, Facebook declared on Tuesday on the first public disclosure of the Chinese pages' attempts to pressurize the November presidential election, reported Boston.
In Support of Joe Biden
The Chinese activity could weaken Trump's constant argument that China is meddling in the presidential election to support former US Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate. While the intelligence community has evaluated that China opposes the current US president's reelection, according to officials this week, the Facebook activity so far was minuscule and Beijing had yet to decide to initiate a large-scale influence operation to leverage itself to Russian efforts in 2016 and 2020.
According to Facebook's head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher, the social network has removed 155 accounts, 11 pages, nine groups, and six Instagram accounts for contravening its policy against foreign or government disruption.
The accounts shared content both in support of and against presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
The 2nd Time
It is the second time that the social media platform has detected such fake accounts emerging in China.
The fake accounts had an estimated 130,000 followers with a very few of originating from the US.
Facebook stated that the people behind the network attempted to conceal their identity and location through virtual private networks and other techniques.
Concerns regarding foreign attempts to interfere in the presidential election were highlighted by a warning on Tuesday from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency that international actors and cybercriminals were possibly trying to spark the prevalence of disinformation regarding the election's results. This includes creating Facebook fake pages or social media content targetted at dishonoring the process.
