Meta shut down close to 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, groups and pages associated with a Chinese political spam network that had targeted users in Australia and other parts of the world, the company has revealed. Meta began investigating the so-called Spamouflage network after several research groups including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi) first discovered the foreign influence campaign. In a report released by the social media giant on Tuesday, Meta said it had removed 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups and 15 Instagram accounts identified as violating…
Tag: Spam
China accused of flooding social media with spam to cover up Covid protests
An attempt to flood social media platforms with spam in order to drown out coverage of the lockdown protests in China was probably backed by the Chinese government, according to analysis by a US cybersecurity firm. Recorded Future found that networks of coordinated bot accounts were targeting non-Chinese social media platforms to crowd out genuine posts about the demonstrations with spam content and by hijacking hashtags of names of Chinese cities. It said China’s government was most likely to be behind the tactic. Charity Wright, a senior analyst at Recorded…