A fake account used a doctored picture (left) of actor Valeria Menendez (right) as its profile picture. Source: Graphika and Stanford Internet Observatory (2022)
“Individuals that have been associated with the US military” have participated in an online propaganda campaign, Meta’s latest adversarial-threat report said. Not only did Facebook (now Meta) confirm its existence but went on further by saying the US military clandestine information warfare on social media was ineffective.
According to the report, published by Facebook, the US network — linked to individuals associated with the US military — operated across many internet services and focused on countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Somalia and Yemen.
The campaign was the first major covert pro-US propaganda operation taken down by a big-tech company and so far the only one. Facebook claims it removed 39 accounts, 16 pages, and two groups, as well as 26 accounts on Instagram, for violating the platforms’ policy against “coordinated inauthentic behavior”.
This is funny because FB is the largest “covert US propaganda operation” in the world and it is most definitely targeting Americans directly. Come to think of it, maybe Google is bigger. When anyone says “US propaganda operation,” a very important question is, whose US? ABN
American Buddhist Net 