In its Q3 Adversarial Threat Report, Meta attributes a pro-US campaign to US military-run phony Facebook accounts, Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts
People associated with the U.S. military were behind dozens of phony Facebook accounts, more than a dozen pages, a pair of groups …
CyberScoopAJ Vicens
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta had already documented and disrupted Belarus- and Russia-linked operations targeting Ukrainians. This report expands that integrity work to a pro-US network associated with the U.S. military, making the platform's attribution process consequential for a partner government as well as adversaries.
Related coverage says the Pentagon planned an audit of its online clandestine information warfare after platforms removed pro-US operations. The episode therefore connects platform enforcement to oversight of how government-linked influence activity is conducted.
First-order effects
The U.S. military and people associated with it face public attribution for the use of phony Facebook and Instagram assets, while Meta formally records the activity as an adversarial threat.
Meta's report places Facebook, Groups, and Instagram at the center of scrutiny over the network's use of coordinated inauthentic identities.
Second-order effects
The Pentagon's planned audit turns platform action against pro-US operations into an internal review issue for the U.S. military rather than solely a content-moderation matter.
If platforms continue publicly attributing state-linked networks irrespective of alignment, adversarial-threat reporting becomes a recurring accountability channel for governments' online influence operations.
The pattern shifts influence-operation oversight toward a shared boundary: governments may run campaigns, but platforms control the identities and distribution systems those campaigns rely on.
The trend: Platform integrity teams are becoming more willing to expose government-linked influence networks, turning account enforcement into a constraint on state information operations.
“People associated with the U.S. military were behind dozens of phony Facebook accounts, more than a dozen pages, a pair of groups and 26 Instagram accounts that pushed pro-US messaging while attempting to hide their real identities, Meta said in a report” https://www.cyberscoop.…
The US op — linked to individuals associated w/US military — ran on Twitter, YT, Telegram, VK, OK, blogs, websites. Fake accounts targeted: 🇦🇫Afghanistan 🇩🇿Algeria 🇮🇷Iran 🇮🇶Iraq 🇰🇿Kazakhstan 🇰🇬Kyrgyzstan 🇷🇺Russia 🇸🇴Somalia 🇸🇾Syria 🇹🇯Tajikistan 🇺🇿Uzbekistan 🇾🇪Yemen
American information operations identified and taken down. “We removed accounts Pages, Groups, accounts on Instagram. This network originated in the United States ... our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military” https://about.fb.com/..."
This is unacceptable! While Russia and China are waging information war against USA, Meta removed 🇺🇸 network — linked the US military! Are you people ok? It is way past time for 🇺🇸 to re-evaluate social-media platforms from a national security perspective. https://about.fb.com/..…
Meta confirms what we all suspected - that pro-western influence op it took down in summer was the US. The operation was notable for being... a bit crap. “Although the people behind it attempted to conceal their identities we found links to individuals linked to US military.” htt…
1/ We just shared multiple policy enforcement reports including our quarterly Adversarial Threat Report and Widely Viewed Content Report (WVCR). A couple things to highlight: 🧵 ATR: https://about.fb.com/... WVCR: https://about.fb.com/...
Meta confirms U.S.-military links to global clandestine info operation following WaPo reporting in September that the Pentagon was conducting a sweeping audit of such psyops— including in particular by Centcom. https://about.fb.com/...
We reported on the latter two networks in September: https://twitter.com/... Since September, the Russian op has kept adding new domains. We've blocked them and updated threat indicators here so others can detect them too: https://about.fb.com/...
Well, now we have a Meta report about a US network associated with the US military. This report is important 🤯 https://about.fb.com/... https://twitter.com/...
2/ In addition to the networks from China and Russia that we first reported in Sept, we're also sharing findings about the US-based op linked to the individuals associated with the US military https://about.fb.com/...
The team continues to share threat intel findings about coordinated adversarial networks that we counter, including with independent security researchers and industry peers, so we can raise our collective defenses. More on our disruptions here: https://twitter.com/... (7/7)
“The US network — linked to individuals associated with the US military — operated across many internet services and focused on Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen.” https://twitter.com/...
Facebook's third-quarter Widely Viewed Content Report shows only one in the top 20 posts qualified as engagement bait, down from 100% a year earlier https://www.wsj.com/...
@JeffHorwitz I guess it's good that the WVCR created some soul-searching and platform improvements, but the whole thing started as a very cynical decoy! (And a ground-laying step for getting rid of CrowdTangle.)
Earlier this year, Meta Platforms quietly convened a war room of staffers to address a critical problem: virtually all of Facebook's top-ranked content was spammy, oversexualized or generally what the company classified as regrettable. New from WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/...
@kevinroose It was probably more Reels in combo with WVCR that forced this, but WVCR revealed more warts than I had expected the company to show. No question that the CT team's dissolution was a failure in the transparency department. I hadn't thought of WVCR as a precursor to it…
@JeffHorwitz It seems odd not to note that the WVCR was designed and launched as a marketing/PR exercise to steer attention away from one “quality problem.” (Highly-engaged political content.) That it revealed another one (spam and garbage) was an accident!
JUST OUT: @meta's Adversarial Threat Report for Q3, 2022. Three takedowns for Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior, from USA, Russia, China. https://about.fb.com/...
“What it showed instead was that among the billions of posts made to the platform, the ones getting the most views—meaning they were actively promoted by the social network's recommendation systems—were generally trashy.” https://www.wsj.com/...
“The content that did (in most recent report) receive top billing on the platform was a mixture of celebrity news, meme pages and Reels videos.” https://twitter.com/...
Earlier this year, Meta convened a war room of staffers to address a critical problem: virtually all of Facebook's top-ranked content was spammy, oversexualized, or generally what the company classified as regrettable https://www.wsj.com/...