China is behind the largest known covert propaganda operation ever identified on Facebook and Instagram, according to a new report by security researchers at Meta.
Meta on Tuesday outed the authors of a four-year long influence campaign dubbed “Spamouflage Dragon,” which first appeared in 2019 to spread propaganda about Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. Since then, the campaign has focused on spreading disinformation about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, attacking dissidents and critics abroad, criticizing the United States, and attempting to sow division during the 2022 midterm elections.
For years, researchers have speculated that the voluminous Spamouflage Dragon posts were connected to the Chinese government but have been unable to publicly prove a link until now. The link comes courtesy of overlapping content found in both Meta’s report and charges filed against Chinese intelligence operatives back in spring.
Since the article didn’t link the report, I have it attached here: https://transparency.fb.com/integrity-reports-q2-2023/
As we always should do with these reports, let’s question the source:
The lead author is Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow for Atlantic Council. According to testimony, “the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and [others] all have inadequately-disclosed ties to the Department of Defense, the C.I.A., and other intelligence agencies. They work with multiple U.S. government agencies to institutionalize censorship research and advocacy within dozens of other universities and think tanks.” According to this internal CIA memo (accessible via FOIA), Atlantic Council fellows are almost all controlled by various US intelligence agencies and report to the director of the CIA.
Ben Nimmo’s track record of identifying state-sponsored misinformation is spotty at best. A few years ago, the DFR wrote a hit piece that implicated Ian Shilling (a British retiree) as a Russian bot disinformation account. This led to the takedown of his account by Twitter… Which was rolled back soon after after he went to the news… He was then suspended under X, so go him I guess.
Looking at the authors, we have Ben Nimmo (discussed above), Mike Torrey (previous NSA and CIA analyst), Margarita Franklin (has conspicuous 3 year gap between her masters graduation and her first job, quickly rising to the role of Director… which could be a coincidence), David Agranovich (ex-DOD, ex-National Security Council), and Margie Milam/Lindsay Hundley/Robert Claim (for all intents and purposes legitimate people focusing on IP and DNS). Given the large number of actual, non-government-affiliated cybersecurity researchers, the prevalence of ex-US intelligence on this report is rather startling.
Overall, there’s a stronger claim for this being US propaganda (as shown above) than there is for some barely-intelligible sentences that look like they were written literally by idiots being Chinese propaganda… But who knows, maybe they’re both propaganda?
Why would the US want to cast doubt on their own voting system? Chinese interference or otherwise
It’s copium from whatever of the two parties is less popular at the time.
I’m saying the report is US propaganda, not the disinformation. The US needs a bogeyman, and it can’t be “some idiots in their mom’s basement”
I’ve edited the original post to clarify.
Red Scare propaganda to manufacture public consent for war with Russia and China
I am really glad you said this, even reading the first half of this I was ready to believe the headline/report to be true.