Meta said that it shut down attempts by social media accounts with ties to various users from China and Russia to influence elections using political misinformation.
The accounts allegedly posed as Western media outlets in an attempt to manipulate users and spread fraudulent content about high-profile, politically charged issues. These include the invasion of Ukraine, said Meta employees on Monday.
Chinese and Russian Influence Campaigns
Meta, which is the parent company of social media platform Facebook and other services, said that the suspected accounts were manually taken down. Furthermore, an automated feature for takedowns was also used for more in-depth investigations and bigger networks.
As a whole, the accounts did not reach nearly the same scale as previously documented efforts on social media that sought to spread politically-related messages to US users and others. However, Meta said that the operations were some of the latest examples of what both the company's officials and top American lawmakers are concerned about.
This is how countries are taking advantage of social media platforms to secretly sway public opinion. This comes as the United States government has reportedly employed a similar digital strategy abroad previously that sought to influence the opinion of the US, as per ABC News.
Meta and other leading internet companies, in response to the scrutiny of foreign actors on their platforms, have taken various steps in an attempt to curb the spread of dubious and misleading information.
The coordinated Chinese operation that Meta revealed on Monday reportedly targeted users primarily in the United States and the Czech Republic. It was also believed to have run fake accounts and websites across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and two petition platforms in the Czech Republic.
According to CNN, Meta's global threat intelligence lead, Ben Nimmo, said that it was the first time that the company observed Chinese accounts targeting Americans in such a manner. The accounts were allegedly talking about divisive domestic issues, including abortion and gun control.
Focusing on Divisive Domestic Issues
A Meta spokesperson added that the company has already cooperated with law enforcement and shared details of the Chinese accounts with the FBI. On the other hand, the Russian campaign was quite expansive.
The operation pushed pro-Kremlin narratives about the invasion of Ukraine, included thousands of accounts and pages across multiple social media platforms, and had spent more than $100,000 on ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Meta did not link either of the campaigns to specific entities within China or Russia, or to the Chinese and Russian governments. Instead, the company said that the accounts were only part of the campaigns that were run out of the respective countries.
The fake posts from the accounts began showing up on various social media platforms in November. They used profile pictures that showed men in formal attire but had the names of women.
In previous influence campaigns, China's propaganda apparatus focused more on criticizing the United States' foreign policy. It also promoted China's view of issues like the crackdown on political rights in Hong Kong and the mass repression in Xinjiang, the New York Times reported.
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