Facebook has removed dozens of accounts for breaching its foreign or government interference policies, including several with links to the Philippine military and police. The social media operator uncovered "the full scope" of such activities after investigating information brought to its attention by the civil society and Rappler, an independent news organisation in the Philippines.
Operating under two main networks, originating from China and the Philippines, individuals behind the activities had coordinated with each other and used fake accounts as an integral part of their operations to mislead people about who they were and what they were doing.
For the network that originated from China, Facebook removed 155 accounts, 11 Pages, nine Groups, and six Instagram accounts for coordinated inauthentic behaviour on behalf of a foreign or government entity, which it defined as foreign or government interference. Such activities had originated in China and focused primarily on the Philippines and Southeast Asia, though, some attention also was placed on the US.
In addition, some 133,000 accounts had followed at least one of these Pages, while 61,000 people joined at least one of these Groups. Another 150 accounts had followed at least one of these Instagram accounts. Some $60 also were spent on ads, paid for in Chinese yuan.
"We identified several clusters of connected activity that relied on fake accounts to pose as locals in countries they targeted, post in Groups, amplify their own content, manage Pages, Like, and comment on other people's posts particularly about naval activity in the South China Sea, including US Navy ships," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, in a post[1] Tuesday. "This campaign took operational security steps to conceal their identity and location including through the use of VPNs (virtual private networks)."
Some of the Pages previously had been removed