Meta dismantles two networks of China and Russia after detecting false campaigns against support for Ukraine

27 Sep. (Portaltic/EP) –

Goal has dismantled a large network in Russia and a smaller one in China for displaying their propaganda activity on Facebook and Instagram with false content against support for Ukraine.

The technology company has acted on two networks without links between them on its social platforms Facebook and Instagram for detecting what it calls a coordinated inauthentic behavior in a report of global intelligent threats.

The first network that Meta has acted on had its origin in China, and deployed its activity on Facebook and Instagram, but also on Twitter and two Czech social networks, as detailed by Meta in a publication on your blog.

This network acted between autumn 2021 and mid-September this year, against users from the United States and the Czech Republic, mainly, with polarized ideological content due to the mid-term elections in the first case, and against government support for Ukraine, in the second.

Specifically, this had created 81 accounts on Facebook, eight pages and one group, and two accounts on Instagram. The following they had was low and, according to the company, those who interacted with the shared content “they called it fake“.

“Our automated systems removed a number of Facebook accounts and pages for various community standards violations, including phishing and lack of authenticity,” Meta adds.

The second network, from Russia and larger, directed its actions against European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and the United Kingdom), with the publication of content on the war in Ukraine, against the latter country and those who supported him.

The actions of this network were deployed through web pages, YouTube videos, which were shared on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Telegram. They also released petitions through sites like Change.org and Avaazand created content in Live Journal. Sometimes they pretended to belong to the media such as Spiegel, The Guardian and Bild.

On Facebook, their presence rose to 1,633 accounts, 703 Pages and one group, and on Instagram, to 29 accounts. He also spent about $105,000 in ads on both social networks.