FACEBOOK REFUSES TO CALL OUT CHINA FOR MASSIVE CHINESE POLARISATION OP

Nothing to see here, just America's biggest rival openly shitting in its social media pool

2024 is going to be the biggest year for democracy yet, with 3.2 billion going to the polls. But what about the non-democratic world? Aren't they  feeling left out? Not quite.

Luckily, for people in the World's many non-democracies, there are lots of ways to participate in those elections through social media.

Sadly, not everyone takes a sanguine view of this.

Recently social media giant Meta (previously Facebook) "evaporated" thousands of what it claims were "fake Facebook and Instagram accounts" claiming there these were "designed to impersonate Americans" and "to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the US ahead of next year’s elections."

Here's a recent Guardian piece with a few details:

"The network of nearly 4,800 fake accounts was attempting to build an audience when it was identified and eliminated by the tech company, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The accounts sported fake photos, names and locations as a way to appear like everyday American Facebook users weighing in on political issues.

Instead of spreading fake content as other networks have done, the accounts were used to reshare posts from Twitter/X that were created by politicians, news outlets and others. The interconnected accounts pulled content from both liberal and conservative sources, an indication that its goal was not to support one side or the other but to exaggerate partisan divisions and further inflame polarization.

The newly identified network shows how US foreign adversaries exploit US-based tech platforms to sow discord and distrust, and it hints at the serious threats posed by online disinformation next year, when national elections will occur in the US, India, Mexico, Ukraine, Pakistan, Taiwan and other nations.

'These networks still struggle to build audiences, but they’re a warning,' said Ben Nimmo, who leads investigations into inauthentic behavior on Meta’s platforms. 'Foreign threat actors are attempting to reach people across the internet ahead of next year’s elections, and we need to remain alert.'"

Inorganic manipulation of public opinion by state actors became a major issue with the rise of the Alt-Right in 2016.  It is clear that Russia played a major part in that.

Meanwhile, efforts to counter such ops will always remain somewhat limited due to the open nature of democratic societies and the limited role that their own Deep States are allowed in taking countermeasures. 

Also, private companies, like Meta, have a lot to lose by calling out such behaviour by foreign actors. In the present case, Meta has refused to name the Chinese government as the guilty party, even though it is difficult to imagine how could not be involved.

"Meta Platforms Inc, based in Menlo Park, California, did not publicly link the Chinese network to the Chinese government, but it did determine the network originated in that country. The content spread by the accounts broadly complements other Chinese government propaganda and disinformation that has sought to inflate partisan and ideological divisions within the US.

To appear more like normal Facebook accounts, the network would sometimes post about fashion or pets. Earlier this year, some of the accounts abruptly replaced their American-sounding usernames and profile pictures with new ones suggesting they lived in India. The accounts then began spreading pro-Chinese content about Tibet and India, reflecting how fake networks can be redirected to focus on new targets."

One interesting characteristic of this operation was the fact that it attempted to link up with content hosted on Elon Musk's Twitter platform, which has been much more accommodating to pro-Chinese content. 

"Many of the fake accounts identified by Meta this week also had nearly identical accounts on X, where some of them regularly retweeted Musk’s posts. Those accounts remain active on X. A message seeking comment from the platform was not returned."

Also, it is noticeable that Meta is utterly powerless to do anything against the vast amounts of soft Chinese propaganda carried on its platforms, like AI-generated videos of cute "Chinese" girls dancing. In fact, it seems to be promoting them. 

This is a typical example of one of these AI-generated Beijing fembots:

This is quite different from a real, actual 3-D Chinese woman, like the "sturdy" example shown below, shaped, as you can clearly see, by thousands of years of continuous back-breaking labour, famines, Mongol invasions, and outbreaks of the plague: