Meta Catches China's Law Enforcement Spreading Propaganda On Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms Inc META on Tuesday announced the discovery of links between Chinese law enforcement and the pro-China “Spamouflage” influence campaign.

Despite its scope and complexity, the disinformation campaign struggled to gain genuine traction and largely remained confined to its echo chamber.

In a quarterly security report, Meta said that it has disabled 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 Facebook Pages, 15 Groups and 15 Instagram accounts connected to the campaign. The operation has been active since 2018 and has been pushing narratives that are positive for China and negative for U.S. and Western policies.

The company said the “Spamouflage” operation managed to extend its reach across at least 50 platforms, including Medium, Reddit, Quora, and Vimeo, making it the most extensive known cross-platform influence campaign to date.

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What sets the “Spamouflage” campaign apart from others is the apparent professional operation behind it, Meta's report noted. The company said the fake accounts exhibited clear shift patterns synchronized with Beijing time, and even took scheduled lunch and dinner breaks.

With a following of about 560,000 accounts on its Facebook pages — most of which are believed to be fake — the campaign appears to be shouting into its own void. Meta's Global Threat Intelligence Lead Ben Nimmo shared an example with Reuters of a page that abruptly switched from posting Chinese-language ads about lingerie to English posts about riots in Kazakhstan.

While the campaign's impact has been limited, its existence poses questions about the future of disinformation campaigns.

If a state-connected entity can run an expansive but ultimately ineffective operation like this one, what does that mean for more skilled actors in the disinformation space?

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