When Facebook said in August it had removed a network of fake accounts that had been trying to amplify criticism of President Donald Trump, it gave some external researchers a sense of déjà vu.
After all, Facebook had taken intermittent action against accounts, pages and groups that were misrepresenting themselves to promote China’s Communist Party, including specific removals of a campaign known as Spamouflage Dragon. The Spamouflage campaign apparently began in the summer of 2019 as a scheme to denounce pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, eventually shifting to demonize critics of Beijing and to praise China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
By August 2020, Facebook, like Twitter and YouTube, was still removing Spamouflage-affiliated accounts that bashed Trump’s inaction on the coronavirus and U.S. scrutiny of TikTok under its “coordinated inauthentic behavior” policy. Other networks of accounts also have managed to return to Facebook after they were detected and previously removed, resulting in frustration for outside disinformation specialists who spend resources catching propaganda and reporting their findings to Facebook, only to do it all over again.
“We’re seeing specific actors who are coming offline, and then they make their way back on,” said one researcher granted the condition of anonymity. “It gives me a sense of why we’re playing catch up. And it’s really f**king frustrating.”
It’s an issue that demonstrates how social media companies, U.S. law enforcement and other entities have failed to effectively disincentivize attackers from using American platforms to try to influenc ..
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