Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on Tuesday it had detected and removed what it described as China’s first targeted campaign to interfere in US politics ahead of the election. midterm elections in November.
Unlike Russia’s efforts In the last two presidential elections, however, China’s campaign has appeared limited in scope – and at times clumsy.
Fake posts began appearing on Facebook and Instagram, as well as on Twitter, in November 2021, using profile photos of men in formal attire but women’s names, the company reports.
The users then pose as conservative Americans, promote gun rights and oppose abortion, and criticize President Biden. By April, they mostly presented themselves as libertarians from Florida, Texas and California, protesting guns and promoting reproductive rights. They used the English language and did not attract many followers.
Two Meta officials said they could not attribute the campaign to any group or individual. However, the tactics reflect China’s development make an effort to use international social networks to promote the political and diplomatic lines of the Communist Party.
What makes the effort unusual is what appears to be a focus on divisive domestic politics ahead of the midterms.
In previous influence campaigns, China’s propaganda machine focused more broadly on criticizing U.S. foreign policy while promoting China’s views on issues such as suppression of political rights in Hong Kong and mass repression in Xinjiang, a predominantly Muslim region, where hundreds of thousands of people are forced into re-education camps or prisons.
Ben Nimmo, Meta’s top official for global threat intelligence, said the operation reflected “a new direction for Chinese influence activities”.
“It’s talking to Americans, pretending to be Americans, rather than talking about America to the rest of the world,” he added later. “So the operation itself is small, but it is a change.”
The activity seems to lack urgency and scope, calling into question its ambitions and goals. It only involved 81 Facebook accounts, eight Facebook pages and one group. By July, activity abruptly diverged from the United States and into politics in the Czech Republic.
The posts appear during business hours in China, typically when Americans are asleep. They walked away significantly during what appeared to be “a substantial lunch break.”
In one post, one user struggled with clarity: “I can’t live in a retrograde America.”
Even if the campaign doesn’t go viral, Nimmo said the company’s disclosure was meant to draw attention to the potential threat of Chinese interference in rivals’ domestic affairs.
Meta also announced that it carried out a much larger Russian influence operation starting in May and focusing mainly on Germany, as well as France, Italy and the UK.
The company says this is the “largest and most complex operation” it has detected from Russia since war in Ukraine starting in February.
The campaign focused on a network of 60 websites impersonating legitimate news organizations in Europe, such as Der Spiegel, Bild, The Guardian and ANSA, the Italian news agency.
The websites would then publish original articles criticizing Ukraine, warning about Ukrainian refugees and arguing that economic sanctions against Russia would only backfire. Those articles were then promoted on the internet, including on Facebook and Instagram, but also on Twitter and Telegram, the messaging app widely used in Russia.
The company report said that the Russian activity involved 1,633 Facebook accounts, 703 pages and a group, as well as 29 different accounts on Instagram. About 4,000 accounts followed one or more Facebook pages. As Meta moved to block domains of activity, new sites appeared, “suggesting persistence and continued investment in the activity”.
Meta started investigating after disclosure in August by one of the German television networks, ZDF. As in the case of Chinese activity, it does not explicitly accuse the government of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, although the activity clearly reflects Kremlin activity. widespread information warfare around its invasion.
“They throw everything against the wall and not a lot of things stick to the wall,” said David Agranovich, Director of Threats at Meta. “By no means can we say that the quest is complete here.”
Meta’s report notes the overlap between the Russian and Chinese campaigns in “several instances”, although the company says they are not linked. Reflective overlap cross-fertilization is increasing of official statements and reports by state media in the two countries, especially regarding the United States.
Accounts linked to the Chinese campaign have posted material from Russian state media, including those related to baseless accusations that the United States was secretly developing biological weapons in Ukraine.
A French-language account involved in the operation posted a version of the allegation in April, 10 days after it was originally posted on Telegram by the Russian Defense Ministry. According to Meta, that answer only garnered one response in French from an authentic user.
“Spoof,” the user wrote. “Fake. Fake as usual”.
