Facebook deletes approximately 150 fake Chinese accounts for political interference in Asia and the United States. According to Tech Crunch, the profiles made use of stolen identity and pictures, as well as artificial intelligence (AI)-generated photos.
A total of two networks have been identified, one hailing from China, with the other hailing from the Philippines.
In a statement, Facebook’s Head of Security Policy Nathan Gleicher said they “removed two separate networks for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB). One of these networks originated in China and the other in the Philippines.”
BBC News states that this is the second time Facebook has identified and interfered with such events, especially those that involve and originate from China.
Hundreds of the fake Facebook profiles reportedly had links to users or individuals living in China, as well as the military in the Philippines, reveals The Guardian. The profiles were found interfering with politics in the United States and in the Philippines.
Most of the profile handlers were traced back to China’s Fujian province, with these accounts paying for advertisements on Facebook in Chinese yuan. According to Tech Crunch, Graphika found that the Chinese network leveraged AI technologies and techniques known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate faces and easily avoid facial detection.
The use of GANs gained popularity in 2019, states Tech Crunch, and has been used in varied operations since then.
Most profiles first surfaced in 2016, at the height of Philippine elections. BBC News notes that most of the content posted then centered on China’s relationship to the Philippines as well as its influence on the said country and the whole of Southeast Asia.
Based on the investigation and findings of Gleicher’s security policy division, they found that the accounts were also linked to the Philippine police and military, with some 276,000 accounts following pages that disseminated fake news and information about domestic politics.
Among the topics regularly touched on by these accounts include communist criticisms; criticisms against Rappler, an independent news organization; support for the possible presidential bid by Sarah Duterte in 2022; support and criticism of China; and many others.
Meanwhile, in the United States, some accounts posted against or in favor of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg.
As of writing, the social media giant has removed a total of 155 accounts, 11 pages, 9 groups, and 6 Instagram profiles for “violating our policy against foreign or government interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity.”
