Australian users of the Facebook and Instagram platforms were among thousands of individuals and businesses targeted by a Chinese political spam campaign.
The so-called Spamouflage network operated across 50 platforms and was aimed at users in Australia, the US, Britain and other western nations, social media giant Meta revealed in a threat report.
After detecting the pro-China operation, the company closed 7704 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups and 15 Instagram accounts identified as breaching the company’s authentic behaviour regulations.
Approximately 560,000 accounts followed one or more of the pages, which Meta said were probably acquired from spammers.
The campaign spent US$3500 (AUD$5430) on Facebook advertising.
“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.
In addition to Instagram and Facebook, the disinformation campaign also targeted YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium, Blogspot, Livejournal and the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Typical content posted included positive commentary about the Chinese government policies in Xinjiang province and denunciation of Western foreign policies and people who spoke out against Beijing, such as journalists and academics.
Campaign activity also included posting material on an online Chinese community forum in Melbourne.
Meta said the network appeared to largely fail in achieving engagement, with commentary by viewers often highlighting bogus claims.
Clusters of fake accounts were operated from parts of China, with the pattern of activity pointing to groups working from an office with daily job schedules, the company found.
The Meta threat report, released yesterday, also highlighted the Russian influence campaign called Doppelganger, which was initially disrupted a year ago.
It aimed to mimic websites of mainstream media outlets in Europe and post bogus stories about Russia’s war on Ukraine, then attempt to spread them online.
(9 News)
