Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced on Tuesday that it had disrupted a massive disinformation campaign tied to Chinese law enforcement. This campaign, which Meta described as the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world,” involved the takedown of over 7,700 accounts and 930 pages on Facebook. The network behind this influence operation aimed to generate positive posts about China, with a focus on promoting positive commentary about China’s Xinjiang province. Additionally, the network spread negative commentary about the U.S. and disseminated disinformation about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in multiple languages. This expansive network operated across various social media platforms, including Medium, Reddit, Tumblr, YouTube, and X (formerly known as Twitter).
Meta began investigating signs of a Chinese influence operation on its platforms after reports emerged in 2022, revealing a disinformation campaign targeting a human rights organization. According to Meta’s global lead for threat intelligence, Ben Nimmo, the operations of this network were extensive but lacked authenticity. The network failed to build genuine audiences on Meta’s platform or elsewhere on the internet. Meta’s researchers were able to link this recent disinformation network to a previous influence campaign in 2019 called Spamouflage. Meta’s quarterly threat report described Spamouflage as the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation to date. The investigation revealed links to individuals associated with Chinese law enforcement.
In addition to this disruption, Meta also identified and analyzed a Russian disinformation campaign that emerged at the beginning of the 2022 war in Ukraine. These efforts by Meta come ahead of an expected contentious election cycle, with concerns over the impact of influence campaigns on past elections leading social media platforms, including Meta, to enforce stricter guidelines for political content. While previous influence campaigns, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016, have affected Meta users, the cybersecurity executives at Meta believe that this recent Chinese disinformation network was not effective. Despite having over 500,000 followers, the majority of these followers were inauthentic and from countries like Bangladesh, Brazil, and Vietnam.
The tactics employed by this network included posting misleading headlines and duplicating content across multiple platforms and languages. One example of a false headline was “Great clue! Suspicious U.S. seafood received before the outbreak at Huanan Seafood Market.” Another false headline claimed, “The truth is: Fort Detrick is the place where COVID-19 originated.” Meta’s researchers found no evidence to support these claims. The disinformation campaign also sought to spread false information about Guo Wengui, an indicted billionaire who fled China in 2014 and was later arrested in 2023 in the U.S. for fraud and money laundering. Various headlines targeted individuals like Steve Bannon, a former Trump administration official and associate of Wengui. Furthermore, Meta discovered “unusual” hashtags associated with the network. For example, in response to reports about a secret Chinese police station in New York City, the campaign used the hashtag #ThisispureslanderthatChinahasestablishedasecretpolicedepartmentinEngland.
Meta’s cybersecurity team is prepared to identify and disrupt further influence networks leading up to the 2024 elections. They remain vigilant and committed to their task of detecting and countering these operations.
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