Meta has taken down thousands of fake accounts that it says were tied to a massive propaganda campaign that was organized by Chinese law enforcement.
Calling the operations “the most prolific covert influence operation that we know of in the world today,” Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, said the group had also created active accounts on Twitter/X, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, and several other social media channels.
The operation focused on spreading pro-China messages and attacked critics of Beijing’s policies, while also taking shots at U.S. foreign policy.
The effectiveness of the campaign seemed muted, however, as the fake accounts seemingly failed to gain a large following. But the scope of the activities, as well as Meta’s discovery of links to Chinese law enforcement (it did not provide the names of any specific agencies or organizations), were noteworthy.
Meta also said it had found evidence linking the fake accounts to an influence campaign first discovered in 2019, which the company called Spamouflage. That effort also failed to gain much traction.
“Spamouflage consistently struggled to reach beyond its own (fake) echo chamber,” Meta wrote in its quarterly security report. “Many comments on Spamouflage posts that we have observed came from other Spamouflage accounts trying to make it look like they were more popular than they were.”
The company said that despite the ineffectiveness of previous efforts, it expects the Chinese operatives to continue trying.
Separately, Meta said it is continuing to take down fake accounts and banning fake websites that are part of a Russian influence operation that’s hoping to erode support for Ukraine. That operation, called Doppelgänger, was first identified last year and is the “largest and most aggressively persistent” the company has seen from Russia since 2017.