Meta links US military to fake social media influence campaigns
- Reference: 1669292111
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/11/24/meta_us_military_influence/
- Source link:
Meta said it picked up on three major covert influence operations on its platforms in the third quarter of the year, the first of which originated in the United States.
Meta previously reported on secretive influence ops being performed by the US [1]in August , but didn't specify anything about its observations at the time outside of saying they originated within the country.
[2]
Now, however, the social media giant is getting more specific. "Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military," Meta said in [3]the report [PDF].
[4]Meta faces lawsuit to stop 'surveillance advertising'
[5]UK competition watchdog investigates Apple and Google 'stranglehold' over the mobile market
[6]Meta's Cicero chatbot can probably beat you at Diplomacy
[7]Feel Luckey, punk? Oculus designer builds VR murder headset
The operators of the network apparently also posted "primarily during US business hours (EST) rather than during work hours in the countries they targeted." Clearly they've never heard of scheduled posts.
In all, 39 Facebook accounts, 16 Pages, two Groups, and 26 Instagram accounts linked to the US military operation were terminated. The operation appeared to have limited reach.
[8]
Operators behind the campaign, which involved posing as locals in countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, managed to attract around 22,000 followers on Facebook and 400 people across the two Groups.
"The majority of this operation's posts had little to no engagement from authentic communities," Meta said. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/25/twitter_meta_troll_accounts/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/research&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y3@jKcbCsDPYqleFTWBKUAAAAJA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Quarterly-Adversarial-Threat-Report-Q2-2022-1.pdf
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/23/meta_surveillance_advertising_high_court/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/23/cma_apple_google_investigation/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/23/metas_cicero_chatbot_can_probably/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/09/oculus_designer_vr_deadly/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/research&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y3@jKcbCsDPYqleFTWBKUAAAAJA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
US Authority
Nothing connected to US AUTHORITIES suprises me any more.
They only show what People want. Their TRUTH is now Laughable
Re: US Authority
Nice - And that's your own opinion, yes? What's the going rate per tweet/post/DM/whatever these days?.
I can't decide whether you creating a brand-new online account specifically to post that anti-US authorities comment in a story about online covert operations is ironic, sad, or absolute genius.
"Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military,"
That doesn't actually state clearly that it was the US military that was behind the campaigns does it? People "associated with the US military" is a pretty vague term (and I can't stand the use of the word individuals like this). What do they mean by "associated with"? People employed by? And even if they are employed by the US military does this mean they were doing so under the instructions of or with the knowledge of the brass?
It's getting on for the sort of vague news that Mark and Lard used to report. Somebody associated with somebody else did something.
It's the same sort of reports that we get when talking about alleged Russian, Chinese, or other operations. In this case it just says "US" instead of "Russia". If it's good enough for the one set of reports it's good enough for the other.
We know the US engage in this sort of thing because they've admitted it in the past. The UK do the same by the way, using 77 Brigade (one of their main specialties being social media "influence operations").
As for what "associated with" means, without access to the relevant HR records Facebook can't exactly tell us whether the people involved are salaried civil servants, military personnel, military reservists on duty, or outside contractors.
I too would like to see more detail on this sort of thing, but among other things I imagine that managers at Facebook don't want to have their collars felt by the US authorities for revealing too many operational details.
This is what happens...
when you don't pay your licenses...