fake news
Russia fakes websites, China interferes in elections: Facebook has to intervene twice
Numerous fake pages, some of which were well done, had to be removed by Facebook.
© NurPhoto / Imago Images
The Facebook parent company Meta had to stop two disinformation campaigns. Among other things, it was about fake German websites that were distributed via the social network.
“A school in Bremen exploded because they tried to save gas”, “A teenager is killed in Berlin because of cuts in street lighting”, “Green Foreign Minister prepares Germany for nuclear war”. These and hundreds of other reports have been haunting social networks in recent months – especially on Facebook.
The reports should give the impression that they come from reputable sources, such as “T-Online”, “Spiegel” or the “Handelsblatt”. But a click on these articles ultimately led to completely different addresses, which, however, reproduced deceptively real websites and tried to pretend to be German media.
More than 60 fake websites
After research by “T-Online”, the Facebook parent company Meta dealt with the allegations and checked what was spreading there in its own social network. The group has now shared the result in a detailed report With. Meta came across not only the Russian fake news campaign, but also a similar attempt by Chinese sources to spread false information in the United States.
The Russian action was a large network that began spreading false information about the war in Ukraine in Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain and also in Ukraine itself in May this year. Facebook discovered more than 60 websites that were very closely modeled on reputable sources in the respective countries, including “Spiegel” or the British “Guardian”.
High investments, a lot of manual work
A lot of money was invested in spreading the news. Because whoever pays the most gets the most attention in social networks. Around 105,000 US dollars are said to have flowed into advertising for the fake pages on Facebook and Instagram alone. In total, Facebook blocked 1,633 accesses, took 703 pages offline, closed a group and removed 29 Instagram accounts as part of this campaign. Facebook states: “This is the largest and most complex operation of Russian origin that we have disrupted in Ukraine since the beginning of the war.”
According to T-Online, not only paid ads were responsible for the distribution of the content, but also numerous straw dolls who shared articles from the supposedly reputable platforms with each other, placed them in the comments on company websites or interspersed them in topic-related discussions.
Meta does not rule out that the action continues in the background and that similar websites and fakes could appear again soon.
Chinese campaign wanted to create atmosphere in the USA
In a second disinformation campaign, apparently originating in China, Facebook had to suspend 81 accounts, remove eight pages, shut down a group and disable two Instagram accounts. According to Meta, the aim of this campaign was to influence public opinion regarding the upcoming general elections in the USA.
Meta writes that the Chinese sources repeatedly shared content from Russian ministries. However, there was no direct connection between the two actions, it is said.