Two networks of fake news and propaganda were brought down by Meta. It is believed that these cyberattacks came from Russia and China, the two main American rivals.
Meta, the social media company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, discovered yesterday two separate networks of fake accounts spreading propaganda and misinformation. These networks belonged to hackers from Russia and China, the West’s major geopolitical rivals, and targeted the United States as well as many countries in Europe.
Now Meta, which is set in California, has banned all of them and shared details with the FBI. It remains unclear whether this operation was limited to those accounts or there is more. The two propaganda campaigns took different forms and were likely not linked with each other but rather a result of separate efforts.
The major campaign of the two, the one started from Russia, spread dangerous propaganda about the war in Ukraine through fake news outlets. These outlets were the imitation of famous western newspapers like The Guardian, the Daily Mail and Die Spiegel (Germany): obviously the Russian counterfeits weren’t exactly the same, but similar enough to trick the inattentive eye. The content of these articles violently referred to alleged western lies about Russian losses in Ukraine and were unapologetic about Russian war crimes like the Massacre of Bucha. All the links inside the articles would connect to Kremlin’s propaganda outlets.
These articles were backed by thousands of fake accounts pretending to be westerners who would share the links and start debates. Meta estimates that $100.000 dollars were spent on the promotion of these links through Facebook and Instagram campaigns.
This would not be the first attempt by Russia, but what is rather surprising is that China appears to have jumped on the hackers bandwagon as well.
How China spread propaganda on Facebook
Usually, Chinese hackers are much more subtle when spreading propaganda in the Western world. This time, however, they appear to have started using the same tools Russia is so familiar with.
Indeed, for the first time China (or hackers operating within China) appears to have created fake accounts and talked directly to Americans. “The Chinese operations we’ve taken down before talked primarily about America to the world, primarily in South Asia, not to Americans about themselves,” said Meta official Ben Nimmo.
Chinese attacks were much less successful than Russian ones. According to Meta, only 80 accounts were created that had little to no following. They were easy to find as well because they only posted during Beijing hours. Such accounts targeted the US as well as European countries like the Czech Republic, trying to create debates about American controversies like abortion or gun rights.
It is unclear whether this operation is over or not. After all, it seems to have barely started and the way these accounts got taken down seems a bit “too easy” for an operation of this scale.
