Meta Platforms Inc. today said that it has disrupted a Chinese disinformation campaign that it called the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.”

The company said that not only Facebook and Instagram had been infiltrated, but so was Twitter –now X – Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, Medium, Substack and Tumblr. In total, the campaign covered at least 50 different apps.

The articles and information appeared mostly in English but were also translated into Greek, German, Russian, Italian, Turkish and many more languages. The campaign could be linked to an older campaign Meta named Spamouflage, as well as to Chinese law enforcement.

Meta said the disinformation that was promulgated put the U.S. in a negative light and China in a positive light. Many of the articles that were published focused on China’s Xinjiang province, a province in the spotlight because of the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghur minority group. Other articles covered the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the destruction of the Nord Stream underwater pipelines, with each story leaning in favor of a narrative that might suit the Chinese government.

Meta’s report said 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook groups and 15 Instagram accounts had been assessed and removed because they were part of the campaign. While the accounts were Chinese, they often used proxy internet infrastructure to make it look like they were based in the U.S.

“We identified multiple distinct clusters of fake accounts that were run from many different parts of China,” Meta said in its quarterly adversarial threat report. “Their behavior suggested that they were operated by groups who may have worked from a shared location, such as an office. Each cluster worked to a clear shift pattern, with bursts of activity in the mid-morning and early afternoon, Beijing time, with breaks for lunch and supper, and then a final burst of activity in the evening.”

Meta said the campaign engaged in the act of “spraying,” meaning posting the same articles on various platforms. The company gave the example of “Great clue! Suspicious U.S. seafood received before the outbreak at Huanan Seafood Market.”

The same post appeared in eight different languages, including Russian and Latin. An article that appeared on various blogging websites was titled, “When can we get rid of the ‘cancer’ of racial discrimination in the United States?”

Even if the articles were somewhat structured, Meta said that, at times, they were amateurish, combining grammatical errors with endless spelling mistakes. Sometimes, the posts were written on forums where they were completely unrelated to the subject being discussed. For those reasons, Meta said, many of the articles and posts failed to gain traction.

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