China is behind the largest known covert propaganda operation ever identified on Facebook and Instagram, according to a new report by security researchers at Meta.
Meta on Tuesday outed the authors of a four-year long influence campaign dubbed “Spamouflage Dragon,” which first appeared in 2019 to spread propaganda about Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. Since then, the campaign has focused on spreading disinformation about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, attacking dissidents and critics abroad, criticizing the United States, and attempting to sow division during the 2022 midterm elections.
For years, researchers have speculated that the voluminous Spamouflage Dragon posts were connected to the Chinese government but have been unable to publicly prove a link until now. The link comes courtesy of overlapping content found in both Meta’s report and charges filed against Chinese intelligence operatives back in spring.
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There’s no guilt implied for Facebook when bad actors use the service in coordinated ways.
If my uncle can post crazy shit to Facebook, so can seemingly-random groups of people.
They believed the Gov. was about to expose their collusion in it, is my bet. An attempt to get ahead of the issue unlike in 2016.
They’re not guilty for the things their users do. Bad actors are all over Facebook, so revealing a government was using their platform for nefarious purposes is more like, “See? We can be good guys, too!” It’s positive PR to be proactive like that.
If you take them at their word, they didn’t realize the efforts were connected to the CCP. Which, since CCP is somewhat competent at online harassment, is believable.