"They insulted doctors, journalists and elected officials, calling them supporters of the Nazis because they were promoting vaccines against the Covid, ensuring that compulsory vaccination would lead to a dictatorship of health," explained Mike Dvilyanski, director investigations into emerging threats at a press conference.
He was referring to a network linked to the anti-vaccination movement dubbed "V_V", which the California group accuses of carrying out a campaign of mass intimidation and harassment against leading figures in health, the media and politics, in Italy and France.
The authors of this operation coordinated in particular via the Telegram messaging system, where the volunteers had access to lists of people to target and to "training" to escape automatic detection by Facebook.
Their tactics included leaving comments under victims' messages rather than posting content, and using slightly changed spellings like "vaxcinati" instead of "vaccinati", meaning "people vaccinated" in Italian.
The social media giant said it was difficult to assess the reach and impact of the campaign, which took place across different platforms.
"We have observed what appears to be a sprawling populist movement that combines existing conspiratorial theories with anti-authoritarian narratives, and a torrent of health disinformation," detail experts from Graphika, a company specializing in social media analysis, in a report on this operation.
Meta also said it dismantled another operation orchestrated from China, which used fake accounts to promote false information.
They amplified the messages posted on the profile of a fabricated Swiss biologist, who reportedly reported that the United States was pressuring the World Health Organization to put the blame for the coronavirus on China.
Chinese state media then quoted this bogus biologist.
"It was like a gallery of mirrors, which endlessly reflect a single false personality," said Meta in a statement.
The Californian group has found links between the operation and employees of the Chinese cybersecurity company Sichuan Silence Information Technology Co. as well as people associated with other Chinese companies specializing in infrastructure around the world.
© 2021 AFP