(PresidentialHill.com)- According to the most recent adversary threat report released this week, Facebook’s parent firm Meta has admitted the identification of multiple clusters of bogus identities and pages thought to be connected to people “affiliated with the US military.”
In a blog post on Tuesday, the organization stated that despite the perpetrators’ efforts to hide their names and coordination, their connections to US military personnel had been discovered throughout their probe.
Meta deactivated 39 Facebook and 26 Instagram accounts and 16 pages, and two groups after the influence effort were uncovered earlier this year. This was done in response to a violation of the company’s “coordinated inauthentic behavior policy.”
The big Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, as well as other key internet platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram, were all involved in the massive operation, the social media behemoth acknowledged. By stating that “the majority of this operation’s posts had little to no participation from legitimate groups” and noting comparable “deceptive tactics” by China and Russia, it appeared to be trying to minimize the discovery.
The Pentagon was forced to conduct a “sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare” after several social media accounts that its operatives used to target foreign audiences in complex psychological warfare efforts were exposed, according to a bombshell investigation by the Washington Post. Meta’s acknowledgment supports this claim.
META – We removed 39 Facebook accounts, 16 Pages, two Groups, and 26 accounts on Instagram for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. 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. 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.
Additionally, the US military has accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and other platforms.
