US military ran 'several clusters' of fake accounts to trick people, claims Meta

Meta on Wednesday accused the US military of creating fake accounts on its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram "in an attempt to trick people." The security experts claimed that they detected “several clusters” of fake accounts on the platform that linked back to the United States military. These fake accounts have been apparently posing themselves as legitimate and were also detected on a range of other networks, including Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram, Meta Inc warned, according to its latest ‘Adversarial Threat Report.'

"This network originated in the United States and focused on a number of countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen. The operation ran across many internet services, including Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki," Meta said in its Adversarial Threat Report, Third Quarter 2022.

Facebook attributed the network of fake social media campaigns targeting the Middle East to the US military, adding that it removed nearly 39 Facebook accounts, 16 pages, two groups, and 26 accounts on Instagram alone. These accounts found to have links with the military of the United States have been violating their rules around “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, said Meta — using the term used to describe fictitious social media campaigns sponsored by the state governments. These "pro-West" campaigns were focused mainly on conflict-ridden regions such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

“It included several clusters of fake accounts on our platforms, some of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems prior to our investigation. The majority of this operation’s posts had little to no engagement from authentic communities,” Meta said in its report. 

Meta accused the US military of being "behind this operation," and of attempts at concealing their identities and coordinating such coordinated inauthentic behaviour. "Our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military," it underscored. It further informed that the company launched a formal investigation into the fake networks following a suspected inauthentic activity reported in August by the researchers at Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. The latter had highlighted pro-Western influence operations on social media carried out by unidentified entities. These posts on the fake accounts run by the US military generally covered “sports and culture in a particular country; cooperation with the United States, including military cooperation; and criticism of Iran, China, or Russia.”

US Central Command involved in anti-Russia, Iran propaganda

In September, the US Department of Defense (DoD) ordered a review of the “information warfare” program after it received complaints about the US military’s attempts to influence the overseas population. Some campaigns at the time were attributed to US Central Command and they involved anti-Russia propaganda and others critical of Iran. “At this time, we do not have any further comments on the report or potential actions that may be taken by the Department as a result of the report,” a Defense Department spokesperson was quoted as saying. 

According to Meta, majority of this operation’s posts "had little to no engagement from authentic communities. The people behind this activity posted primarily in Arabic, Farsi, and Russian about news and current events, including terrorism concerns and praise of the US military, as well as content about the COVID-19 pandemic — some of which we removed for violating our misinformation policy." Further Meta revealed that the operation also involved posts criticising Iran, China, and Russia, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s treatment of the Uyghur people, Iran’s influence in the Middle East, and the support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by Russia and China. These campaigns spent about $2,500 in ads on Facebook, paid in both US dollars and British pounds.