- Meta thwarted a network based in China that sought to influence the US midterm elections.
- It was the first Chinese network Meta to be shut down, and it targeted US domestic politics prior to the midterms.
- It was almost ineffective as most of the propaganda messages were sent while Americans were asleep.
MetaOn Tuesday, the US announced that it had taken down a China-based disinformation network that sought to influence the US midterm elections. However, it was mostly ineffective due both to the time difference and the regular working hours of the propaganda workers.
According to Meta, the network, which Meta called “small”, originated in China. It was spread across many social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tuesday blogpostBy Ben Nimmo (Meta’s global threat intelligence leader) and David Agranovich (the company’s director for threat disruption).
Meta did not have enough evidence for the identification of who was behind China-based operations. ReutersReports cite a company executive who spoke at a press conference on Tuesday.
Meta said that the network used political hashtags and fake accounts to spread its propaganda. report.Two clusters within the network “targeted each side of the political spectrum” in English.
Meta presented two memes that featured President Joe Biden as well as Senator Marco Rubio, which were examples of what the network disseminated. One year in, nothing is built, everything is back, and nothing is better. The meme that featured Biden was captioned with the photo: “One year in, Nothing is built. Another meme featured a Rubio photo and the words “$1.3 Million from Russia, $3.3 Million from NRA, Democracy on Sale.”
The influence operation ended in failure. The US-focused clusters attracted “minimal reaction” to their posts.
Meta explained that this was due to the fact that propaganda workers worked nine-to-five hours in China on weekdays and ate long lunches. They appear to have taken a significant lunch break and posted less on weekends. This means that the operation was mostly posting while Americans were sleeping,” according to Meta.
Some accounts that posted the propaganda messages used poor English and posted them too often. Some accounts shared the exact same post to several groups on one occasion, but then stopped posting for a week. “What they did post contained linguistic errors. “I can’t live on regression in America!” per Meta.
The tech company stated that even though the China-based influence operations didn’t succeed, it was significant because it was the first Chinese network Meta “disrupted”, which targeted US domestic politics in advance of the midterm elections. Meta said that previous Chinese influence operations were more focused on criticizing the United States for international audiences than they were on primarily targeting US citizens.
Meta also said that it had shut down a Russia disinformation network targeting Europe. This network posted original articles supporting Russia during the war with Ukraine on over 60 fake European news websites.
