Meta has removed nearly 4,800 fake accounts that were part of a China-based influence campaign aimed at spreading polarising content about United States politics ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the tech giant has announced.
The influence operation was one of two China-based campaigns detected by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, in the third quarter of 2023, the tech said in its latest threat adversarial report released on Thursday.
“The people behind this activity posted in English about US politics and US-China relations. The same accounts would criticize both sides of the US political spectrum by using what appears to be copy-pasted partisan content from people on X,” Meta said.
Meta said the network of accounts drew from both liberal and conservative sources while resharing genuine posts by politicians and news outlets under fake identities.
“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,” the tech firm said.
Meta said it had disrupted five influence campaigns based in China in total this year, more than from any other country. Meta did not attribute the network to the Chinese government or any other specific individual or group in China.
The tech giant said it had also shut down a network based in Russia in the third quarter that spread content about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ran fictitious “media” brands.
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