Meta company detected and took down from Facebook this week “the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world” linked to Chinese operators based on fake accounts. Meta revealed it removed 7,704 accounts, 954 pages and 15 groups. The Chinese influence operation targeted at least 50 other platforms and apps, including YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, Pinterest, Medium, and X, the company formerly known as Twitter. The network promoted posts praising China’s policies, denigrated U.S. and Western foreign policy, and attacked critics of the Chinese government, including journalists and researchers.
Meta began looking for signs of a Chinese influence operation on its own platforms after reports in 2022 highlighted how a disinformation campaign linked to the Chinese government targeted a human rights nongovernmental organization. Many Instagram accounts were also removed. “This is one of the single-biggest takedowns of coordinated inauthentic behavior that we’ve ever run into,” Ben Nimmo, global threat intelligence lead at Meta, told media. Meta researchers expect the threat actors behind the campaign to rebuild and keep trying their „work.”
