Facebook Parent Says It Shutdown Largest and Most Complex Russian Operation Ever- Unique Chinese Operation Also Disrupted

US media is report­ing that Face­book par­ent com­pa­ny Meta has announced shut­ting down two sep­a­rate net­works of fake accounts engaged in covert influ­ence oper­a­tions run from Chi­na and Rus­sia. Accord­ing to the CNN report, while the Chi­nese net­work was rel­a­tive­ly small, Meta said the Russ­ian net­work was the “largest and most com­plex Russ­ian oper­a­tion we’ve dis­rupt­ed since the war in Ukraine began:”

Septer 7, 2022 Face­book par­ent com­pa­ny Meta announced Tues­day it had detect­ed and shut down two sep­a­rate net­works of fake accounts engaged in covert influ­ence oper­a­tions run from Chi­na and Rus­sia. The Chi­nese net­work was small and received bare­ly any atten­tion, but it did include some accounts that posed as Amer­i­cans on both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, accord­ing to a Meta report released Tues­day. Meta pub­licly detailed the take­down as it remains on high alert for for­eign inter­fer­ence in the US midterm elec­tions, a Meta spokesper­son told CNN. Ben Nim­mo, Meta’s glob­al threat intel­li­gence lead, told CNN it was the first time the com­pa­ny had seen Chi­nese accounts tar­get­ing Amer­i­cans in this way. “They were run­ning fake accounts that pre­tend­ed to be Amer­i­cans and try to talk like Amer­i­cans and they were talk­ing about real­ly divi­sive domes­tic issues like abor­tion and gun con­trol,” he said. The com­pa­ny has shared details of the Chi­nese accounts with the FBI, a Meta spokesper­son said. The Russ­ian cam­paign, on the oth­er hand, was vast. It pushed pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives about the war in Ukraine, includ­ed thou­sands of accounts and pages across mul­ti­ple social media plat­forms and spent more than $100,000 on ads on Face­book and Insta­gram. Meta did not attribute either cam­paign to spe­cif­ic enti­ties with­in Chi­na or Rus­sia, or to the Chi­nese and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments, instead say­ing only the accounts that were part of the cam­paigns were run out of the respec­tive coun­tries. Meta said the net­work of Russ­ian accounts it had tak­en down was the “largest and most com­plex Russ­ian oper­a­tion we’ve dis­rupt­ed since the war in Ukraine began, it ran a sprawl­ing net­work of over 60 web­sites imper­son­at­ing news orga­ni­za­tions, as well as accounts on Face­book, Insta­gram, YouTube, Telegram, Twit­ter,” and oth­er sites, accord­ing to the report. More than 2,000 Face­book accounts and pages were part of the effort to push pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives about the war in Ukraine, Meta said. More than $100,000 were spent on ads across Face­book and Insta­gram as part of the cam­paign, Meta said.  Rus­sia has spent over $300 mil­lion on influ­enc­ing for­eign elec­tions since 2014, US offi­cials say The oper­a­tion includ­ed web­sites that were designed to mim­ic real West­ern news out­lets, includ­ing The Guardian.

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In Feb­ru­ary 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed Twit­ter and Face­book had removed two anti-Ukrain­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion net­works from their plat­forms. The com­pa­nies said the influ­ence oper­a­tions were linked to Rus­sia and Belarus and tar­get­ed Ukrainians.