Global Courant 2023-05-04 15:31:00
HONG KONG — A China-based online network sought to recruit protesters in Europe and set up a media company in Britain as part of a disinformation campaign, Facebook owner Meta said.
The network’s social media accounts, which ranged from Facebook to YouTube, Telegram and Twitter, provided content focused on incendiary political issues in Europe and the United States.
Meta said it removed more than 100 Facebook pages, profiles and Instagram accounts associated with the network, accusing them of violating its policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Another 50 accounts linked to another China-based network were also deleted.
“These latest networks have been experimenting with a range of tactics we have not seen before in China-based operations,” Meta said in its quarterly Adversarial Threat Report, published Wednesday.
“The most recent behaviors included setting up a front media company in the West, hiring freelance writers around the world, offering protester recruitment and co-opting an NGO (non-governmental organization) in Africa,” it said. .
While Meta has removed some accounts, much of the network’s content remains online.
On Twitter, an account named in the Meta report called New Europe Observation until April 28 shared inflammatory content attacking migrants to Europe and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists.
An August 2022 tweet from the group said it was hiring “part-timers” to attend a protest in Hungary against billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a financier often targeted by far-right conspiracy theories.
Some of his Twitter posts used viral tweets from far-right accounts.
Interspersed with the European-focused messages was content that pushed Beijing’s line on its policies in China’s western Xinjiang region, where activists accuse authorities of holding more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims in forced re-education camps.
Another account Meta said the network ran focused more on divisive issues in the US, including police brutality, crime and LGBT rights.
The network was run by a UK-based front company called London New Europe, Meta said, whose company data and Google Maps showed it was operating out of a nondescript apartment complex in northeast London.
The group sought to hire Central Asian freelance writers to produce content, and “tried to engage individuals in recording English-language videos written by the network,” Meta said.
