"Pose As Lawyers, Activists": How Chinese Accounts Spread Fake News In India

A recent report by Meta has highlighted the growing menace of fake Facebook accounts originating from China spreading fake news about India. The report sheds light on the sophisticated strategies employed by these accounts to manipulate public opinion and influence discourse. Meta, in its quarterly threat report, revealed that it dismantled a large network of fake accounts originating from China earlier this year.

The accounts, pretending to be Indians, were actively involved in spreading misleading information on Indian politics and other issues of national security.

"This network operated fictitious personas on Facebook posing as journalists, lawyers and human-rights activists. The network posted mainly in English, and to a lesser extent in Hindi and Chinese, about regional news, culture, sports and travel in Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh. Notably, the Tibet-focused accounts posed as pro-independence activists who also accused exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and his followers of corruption and pedophilia," the report said.

"The Arunachal Pradesh-focused accounts posted positive commentary about the Indian army, Indian athletes and Indian scientific achievements, and accused the Indian government of corruption and supporting ethnic violence in the Indian state of Manipur," Facebook's parent company added in its report.  

The tech giant said that in order to make the content look authentic, the accounts would comment on and share each other's posts.

Meta claimed that the network has been successfully dismantled from all their platforms.

The report also stated that another set of 4,700 fake accounts from China also targetted US politics, making posts on topics like abortion, presidential candidates and US-China relations.

Some of these accounts posed as Americans and shared links to articles from mainstream US media like HuffPost, Breitbart, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News, the report said.