United States: Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, has shut down China-based influence campaigns on its platforms this year.
The decision comes after the campaign that spreading polarising content about US politics ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the company stated.
Meta has removed nearly 4,800 fake accounts. The influence operation was one of two China-based campaigns detected by Meta, in the third quarter of 2023, the tech said in its latest threat adversarial report.
Meta remarked that, “The people behind this activity posted in English about US politics and US-China relations. The same accounts would criticise both sides of the US political spectrum by using what appears to be copy-pasted partisan content from people on X.”
Meta noted that the network of accounts drew from both liberal and conservative sources while resharing genuine posts by politicians and news outlets under fake identities.
The company commented that, “It’s unclear whether this approach was designed to amplify partisan tensions, build audiences among these politicians’ supporters, or to make the fake accounts sharing authentic content appear more genuine.”
This year, Meta reported that it had disrupted five influence campaigns from China, more than any other country. The tech firm did not attribute the network to the Chinese government or any other specific Chinese individual or group.
The company also disrupted operations originating in Russia and Iran. The release of Meta’s report coincides with worries that tech giants like Facebook and X may be used to sow division and discord in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential elections.
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