Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has revealed the shutdown of a covert campaign, dubbed “Spamouflage,” aimed at clandestinely enhancing China’s image on its platforms. The company disclosed the removal of approximately 7,700 Facebook accounts, alongside hundreds of pages, groups, and Instagram accounts actively promoting pro-China narratives online.
These accounts typically lauded China and its policies in Xinjiang while concurrently criticizing the United States, Western foreign policy, and individuals who voiced criticism of Beijing, including journalists.
Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, Ben Nimmo, characterized this operation as possibly “the largest, though unsuccessful, and most prolific covert influence operation that we know of in the world today.”
How Did the ‘Spamouflage’ Campaign Operate?
The “Spamouflage” campaign, according to Meta, had a broad geographical focus, targeting Taiwan, the United States, Australia, Britain, Japan, and global Chinese-speaking audiences. Intriguingly, it also extended beyond Meta’s platforms to include non-Meta platforms like YouTube, Reddit, Quora, Medium, and Twitter (now known as X).
Nimmo’s team managed to trace the campaign’s origins to individuals connected with Chinese law enforcement agencies. It is believed that the accounts involved were primarily procured from commercial spam operators in other countries, such as Vietnam or Bangladesh, and were subsequently repurposed to disseminate political messages.
Nimmo highlighted one account that had previously featured Chinese-language advertisements for lingerie but abruptly transitioned to English-language posts concerning riots in Kazakhstan. This abrupt shift in content was indicative of the campaign’s deceptive nature.
Interestingly, some of the techniques employed by this Chinese operation bore similarities to Russia’s infamous “troll factories.” This suggests the possibility of mutual learning between the two operations, although Nimmo emphasized that the Chinese campaign’s impact remained limited.
Despite its size and volume, the “Spamouflage” operation struggled to extend its reach beyond its fabricated echo chamber, as Nimmo pointed out. This implies that while large and disruptive, the campaign ultimately failed to achieve its intended objectives, which were geared towards reshaping China’s global image through covert online manipulation.