Meta removed a Chinese bot farm that manipulated the issue of aid to Ukraine

Meta said it recently took down a network of fake accounts based in China.

The BBC writes about it.

The bot farm contained more than 4,700 accounts and used photos and names stolen from other users around the world.

The bots pretended to be Americans, manipulated public opinion about US politics and US-China relations, and insulted each other. Also among the topics with which the bots worked were abortions, cultural issues and aid to Ukraine.

China is now the third largest source of bot farms after Russia and Iran.

"Foreign threat actors are trying to reach people over the Internet before next yearʼs election, and we need to be on the alert," said Ben Nimmo, who investigates inauthentic behavior on Meta platforms.

The company also identified two smaller networks: one in China, focused on India and Tibet, and another in Russia. The Russian bot network published messages about the invasion of Ukraine mainly in English and promoted Telegram channels.

• In May, Chinese hackers managed to steal nearly 60,000 emails from ten US State Department email accounts. For this, cybercriminals hacked the device of a Microsoft engineer.