The company reports users in Australia, UK, US, and other regions were targeted by a political spam network across over 50 platforms
Meta revealed it closed nearly 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, groups, and pages linked to a Chinese political spam network that targeted users in Australia and globally. This investigation, initiated in 2019, coincided with research groups, like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), coining the term “Spamouflage.” In its recent report, Meta disclosed the removal of 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups, and 15 Instagram accounts due to violations of the company’s inauthentic behavior policy.
Approximately 560,000 accounts followed one or more of these pages, and Meta suggested that these pages were likely obtained from spam operators. The campaign invested $3,500 (equivalent to A$5,430) in Facebook advertisements.
Meta stated, “This network originated in China and had a global reach, targeting regions like Taiwan, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Chinese-speaking audiences worldwide.”
The company disclosed that it uncovered this influence operation on over 50 online platforms and forums, including YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium, Blogspot, Livejournal, and the platform X (formerly known as Twitter), in addition to Instagram and Facebook.
While the Spamouflage network operated from China, Meta noticed that a significant number of accounts seemed to be managed from a shared location, possibly an office, displaying patterns of activity like bursts in the morning and afternoon, aligned with Beijing time, with breaks for lunch and dinner.
Meta stated that the network predominantly published favorable content about China and the Xinjiang province, while also expressing disapproval of U.S. actions, Western foreign policies, and individuals critical of the Chinese government, which included journalists and researchers.
The campaign shifted its focus from major platforms like Facebook and Twitter to smaller websites after these platforms initially detected and blocked it in 2019.
“Spamouflage heavily utilized Medium, X (formerly known as Twitter), Reddit, YouTube, Vimeo, and Soundcloud.”
At times, the content posted was entirely unrelated to the theme of the platform. For instance, on Quora, in response to a query about losing belly fat through weightlifting, an account associated with the campaign responded with an article titled “Against Telecom & Online Fraud, Chinese Police Strengthening International Law Enforcement Cooperation.”
The report also identified instances where the campaign posted on a Chinese diaspora forum concentrating on the Melbourne community.
Meta highlighted that one of the major campaigns undertaken by this operation involved attempting to attribute the origin of Covid to the United States. This included the publication of a 66-page “research paper,” which consistently misspelled the names of key figures mentioned in the paper.
Subsequently, the group released two videos on YouTube and Vimeo to endorse the research paper. They proceeded to produce an article referencing the research while incorporating the videos to assert that the U.S. had been concealing information regarding the Covid’s origins. This article was disseminated across various forums, including LiveJournal, Tumblr, and Medium, with the associated links being shared on social media platforms.
Meta uncovered an article with a focus on Australia, which criticized SBS’s 2021 choice to halt broadcasts from Chinese state-run channels due to complaints from human rights organizations.
Despite the extensive use of numerous accounts and platforms, Meta noted that the Spamouflage operation “consistently encountered challenges in extending its influence beyond its fabricated echo chamber.”
“Numerous comments on Spamouflage posts that we observed appeared to originate from other Spamouflage accounts, attempting to create an illusion of greater popularity than actually existed.”
Meta attributed this issue in part to inadequate quality control and the fact that many of the acquired pages had no relevance to the campaign’s ultimate objectives. This campaign is one of five outlined in Meta’s quarterly report, with the others being linked to campaigns from Russia, Iran, and Turkey.
According to an earlier report by ASPI, it was suggested that Chinese Communist Party influence operations were likely carried out in parallel, if not cooperatively, by various Chinese party-state entities. These entities included the People’s Liberation Army’s strategic support force (PLASSF), the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Central Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which at times appeared to collaborate with private Chinese companies.
