Meta Pulls Over 7,500 Chinese Accounts Linked To Influence Campaign 'Spamouflage'

Social networking giant Meta has pulled down more than 7,500 Facebook accounts linked to Chinese influence campaign, in a "biggest single takedown"

Social networking giant Meta has pulled down more than 7,500 Facebook accounts linked to Chinese influence campaign, in a "biggest single takedown". The company has removed almost 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, groups and pages linked to a Chinese propaganda campaign named "Spamouflage". The sprawling Chinese campaign targeted many regions globally, including Taiwan, the US, the UK, Australia and Japan.

“This network originated in China and targeted many regions around the world, including Taiwan, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and global Chinese-speaking audiences,” Meta said.

The network Spamouflage was first identified by the social networking giant in 2019 and is said to have originated within Chinese law enforcement, though it expanded over the last four years as more accounts were identified by the company.

“This is the biggest single takedown of a single network we have ever conducted. When you put it together with all the activity we took down across the internet, we concluded it is the largest covert campaign that we know of today," Meta's Global Threat Intelligence Lead Ben Nimmo was quoted as saying by The New York Times.

Nimmo described the operation as "large and noisy," but with limited effectiveness in penetrating broader audiences.

According to a report by Forbes that quoted Meta, the Chinese propaganda network also attempted to spread false claims that Covid-19 originated in the US and included a 66-page “research paper” that was “remarkable for its errors”.

The network started on major social networking platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter), before expanding its reach to include smaller platforms such as Reddit, Quora, Medium and Vimeo. Spamouflage network operated from multiple locations in China and comprised clusters of fake accounts that shared digital infrastructure and operated in shifts synchronised with Beijing time, even pausing for lunch and dinner breaks.