SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter have removed from their networks influential activities promoting US foreign policy interests abroad. researcher By the Stanford Internet Observatory and research firm Graphika.
It was the first time an influential campaign pushing US interests overseas was discovered and removed from a social media platform. The operation, which ran for nearly five years on eight social networks and messaging apps, attacked the interests of Russia, China, Iran, and other nations while promoting U.S. views, values, and goals, it said. Researchers have discovered
The accounts behind this operation, often posing as news outlets or impersonating non-existent people, posted content in at least seven languages, including Russian, Arabic, and Urdu. The post criticized countries like Russia for engaging in “imperialist wars” in Syria and Africa, and praised America’s aid efforts in Central Asia and Iraq.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said the “countries of origin” of its accounts were the United States, while Twitter said the “presumed countries of origin” of its accounts were the United States and the United Kingdom, according to the report. rice field.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this,” said Rene DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “This is the first time we’ve seen Twitter and Meta drop a pro-American foreign influence operation.”
Until Wednesday, nation-state-backed influence operations on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were largely due to Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign adversaries in the United States. It pioneered many of these online disinformation tactics, using Twitter and other social networks to spread divisive messages among American voters in the 2016 presidential election. China is also using Facebook and Twitter to polish its image and undermine accusations of human rights violations.
Researchers have long suspected that influence operations promoting U.S. interests abroad were active, but until now no specific efforts have been documented or studied.
The US government has not commented on the secret program. brig. Pentagon spokesman General Pat Ryder said the agency “reviews and evaluates all information provided by Facebook and Twitter.”
Twitter and Meta, which did not allow accounts working together covertly to promote specific stories, removed the accounts in July and August, according to the report. Other platforms used in this operation were Telegram, Google’s YouTube, and Russian social media networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
Twitter said it had no comment on Stanford and Graphika’s reports. Meta did not respond to requests for comment.The companies regularly reveal influential operations they have removed from their platforms, but have not published reports about their pro-U.S. campaigns.
The only U.S. business Meta has ever named is the company’s clearly In October 2020, marketing firm Rally Forge teamed up with conservative organization Turning Point USA to target Americans.
YouTube said in an email that it had stopped posting on several channels promoting US diplomacy in Arabic, Persian and Russian, including channels linked to US consulting firms. It said its findings were similar to those of the Stanford and Grafica reports.
Diresta said the tactics used in the pro-US influence campaign were similar to those used by China. While Russia often tries to sow divisiveness with her campaigns online, China is more focused on promoting a rosy picture of life in the country, she said. The goal of the pro-American campaign was also to “show how great the United States is compared to other countries.”
According to the report, researchers were notified of pro-US online campaigns by Meta and Twitter and were able to analyze and study their activity. Researchers found that the operation primarily focused on messages supporting the United States and the West through memes and fake news stories while criticizing Russia, China and Iran.
The accounts tailored their language and messages to different regions, researchers said. From June 2020 to March 2022, a group of 12 Twitter accounts, 10 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook profiles and 10 Instagram accounts were created with a focus on Central Asia. Some were disguised as press agencies with names like Vostochnaya Pravda. At least one account masqueraded as an individual using a profile photo that was based on the image of Puerto Rican actress Valeria Menendez.
These accounts then posted about food shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Central Asian countries and cheered for pro-Ukrainian protests in those places.
Another set of 21 Twitter accounts, 6 Instagram accounts, 5 Facebook profiles and 2 Facebook pages targeted Iranian audiences between November 2020 and June 2022, according to the report. I was doing it. Some personas used profile pictures that were supposedly created using artificial intelligence. Many tried to represent themselves as real people by interspersing Iranian poetry and pictures of Persian cuisine between political messages.
Posts in the effort allege that the Iranian government took food from its citizens and provided it to the Hezbollah militant group, as well as blackouts that reportedly caused the Iranian chess team to lose an international online tournament. I emphasized embarrassing moments for
On Facebook and Instagram, dozens of posts negatively compared Iranian women’s opportunities to foreign women’s opportunities. claimed to bring economic repercussions to Iranians.
Another Middle East-focused account group praised the US Agency for International Development’s efforts in Iraq and discussed positive interactions between US forces and Syrian children.
A group of accounts focused on Central Asian countries mentioned USAID 94 times on Twitter and 384 times on Facebook, praising Washington as a trusted economic partner to help reduce the region’s dependence on Russia.
None of the campaigns reached a large audience. Researchers found that most posts and tweets received “a handful” of likes and retweets, and only 19% of identified secret accounts had more than 1,000 followers.
Julian E. Burns contributed to the report.