Meta claims to have removed a huge number of fake and propaganda accounts and pages that could be traced back to the U.S. military, that were purportedly operating with different internet services focused on a slew of Middle Eastern and African nations.
Meta shared their findings in a recent third quarter Adversarial Threat Report, providing their findings concerning what they call coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB), and other potential threats.
This report discusses three main networks of concern the company removed from their services – networks that were also found to be running on many other popular social media and sharing platforms.
This is what Meta had to say:
1. United States: We removed 39 Facebook accounts, 16 Pages, two Groups and 26 accounts on Instagram for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. This network originated in the United States and focused on a number of countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen. The operation ran across many internet services, including Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. It included several clusters of fake accounts on our platforms, some of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems prior to our investigation. The majority of this operation’s posts had little to no engagement from authentic communities.
We found this activity as part of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region. We’ve shared information about this network with independent researchers at Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, who have published their findings about this network’s activity across the internet on August 24, 2022. Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military.
2. China (originally reported on September 27, 2022): We took down 81 Facebook accounts, eight Pages, one Group and two accounts on Instagram for violating our policy against CIB. This network originated in China and targeted the United States, the Czech Republic and, to a lesser extent, Chinese- and French-speaking audiences around the world. It operated across many internet services, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and two Czech petition platforms.
Each cluster of accounts posted content during working hours in China rather than when their target audiences would typically be awake. Only a few people engaged with it and some of those who did called it out as fake. Our automated systems took down a number of accounts and Pages for various community standards violations, including impersonation and inauthenticity. We found this activity as part of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region.
3. Russia (originally reported on September 27, 2022): We took down 1,633 accounts, 703 Pages, one Group and 29 accounts on Instagram for violating our policy against CIB. This network originated in Russia and targeted primarily Germany, and also France, Italy, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. The operation centered around a large network of websites carefully impersonating legitimate news organizations in Europe. There, they would post original articles that criticized Ukraine, praised Russia and argued that Western sanctions on Russia would backfire. They would then promote these articles, memes and YouTube videos on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter, petitions websites Change[.]org and Avaaz, and LiveJournal.
We began our investigation after reviewing public reporting into a portion of this activity by investigative journalists in Germany. The researchers at the Digital Forensic Research Lab also provided insights into a part of this network, and we’ve shared our findings with them to enable further research into the broader operation. Throughout our investigation and after our initial reporting, as we blocked this operation’s domains, they set up hundreds of new websites, suggesting persistence and continuous investment in this activity. We’ve continued to update our original takedown report with these domains to help inform open source security research.
We know that influence operations will keep evolving in response to our enforcement, and new deceptive behaviors will emerge. We will continue to refine our enforcement and share our findings publicly. We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we’ve said before — it’s an ongoing effort and we’re committed to continually improving to stay ahead.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
This is like the pot calling the kettle black. Fascistbook is one of the greatest assets of the military has ever had. This is just a smoke & mirrors report by Meta to try and pretend that they operate independently and for the people’s good, when that is the farthest thing from the truth.
He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: but a false witness deceit.
Proverbs 12:17
In 2021 Whitney Webb of Unlimited Hangout published a great piece showing how Facebook is nothing short of a creation between the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Definitely worth a read.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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I deleted my Facebook account in 2021 after encountering a slew of military attack bots on a page. I had commented that the virus wasn’t real on a post about asymptomatic, & it got a lots of likes.
I have no interest in returning, the site was boring, it was dying before the pandemic -I was rarely using it. Look the name was changed to meta which means dead. I guess they’re trying to revive user confidence by what they’re doing now.