The U.S. Ran a Disinfo Campaign Against Russia, China, and Iran on Facebook and Twitter, Researchers Say
In July and August, Twitter and Meta announced that they had uncovered two overlapping sets of fraudulent accounts that were spreading inauthentic content on their platforms. The companies took the networks down but later shared portions of the data with academic researchers. On Wednesday, the Stanford Internet Observatory and social media analytics firm Graphikaa joint study on the data, revealing that the campaigns had all the markings of a U.S. influence network.
Shelby Grossman, a staffer at the Internet Observatory and a member of the research team that published the paper, said that the study is one of the most intensive analyses yet of a “covert, pro-U.S. influence operation.” She also noted that the campaigns were very similar to the influence campaigns launched by America’s foes.
The propaganda, which spread “pro-U.S.” narratives in online communities in Russia, China, and Iran, leveraged droves of fake profiles and may have persisted in its activities for the better part of a decade. Twitter says that some 299,566 tweets were sent by 146 fake accounts between March 2012 and February 2022. Meanwhile, the Meta dataset shared with researchers included “39 Facebook profiles, 16 pages, two groups, and 26 Instagram accounts active from 2017 to July 2022,” the report says.