China News Service, August 26. According to the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" reports, Stanford Internet Observatory and research firm Graphika recently released a report that Facebook parent company META and Twitter were purged from their network. launched an influence operation designed to advance U.S. foreign policy interests abroad.

  According to reports, this is the first time the social media platforms have detected and purged influence operations aimed at advancing U.S. interests abroad.

The researchers found that the operation ran for nearly five years on eight social media platforms and messaging apps that not only promoted U.S. views, values ​​and goals, but also attacked the interests of countries such as Russia and Iran.

  According to reports, the accounts behind the operation often posed as news outlets or played fictional characters, posting messages in at least seven languages, including Russian, Arabic and Urdu.

The messages criticized Russia and other countries for conducting "imperialist wars" in Syria and Africa, while praising U.S. aid in Central Asia and Iraq.

  Meta removed the accounts for violating its "coordinated false behavior" policy, and Twitter for violating its Platform Manipulation and Fake Accounts policy.

Meta believed the accounts were from the U.S., while Twitter determined they were from the U.S. and the U.K., the researchers said.

The researchers also observed evidence that the U.S. military might have something to do with it.

  A Meta spokesman said the company had no more information to share, citing previous discussions by security executives about the difficulty of linking a network of fake accounts to specific groups or governments.

The accounts were deleted in July and August.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

  "This is the first time we've seen anything like this," said Renee DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. "This is the first time we've seen Twitter and Meta purge pro-American influence abroad. ."

  Although researchers have long suspected that influence operations promoting U.S. interests abroad are active, there has never been concrete documentation or research.

  The U.S. government has not commented on the secret program.

Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder has said the agency "will investigate and evaluate information provided by Facebook or Twitter."

  Additionally, YouTube said in an email that it had shut down several channels promoting U.S. foreign affairs in Arabic, Farsi and Russian as part of an investigation into coordinated influence operations, including a consultation with a U.S. Company-related channels.

The company said its findings were similar to those reported by Stanford and Graphika.

  DiResta said the pro-U.S. influence campaign used a tactic whose goal was to "show how great the U.S. is compared to other countries."

  The accounts tailor their language and messages to different regions, the researchers said.

For example, one campaign created 12 Twitter accounts, 10 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook profiles and 10 Instagram accounts between June 2020 and March 2022, focusing on Central Asian users.

Some accounts used names such as "Oriental Pravda" to impersonate the media.

At least one account used a photo of Puerto Rican actress Valeria Menendez as a profile picture posing as a fictitious identity.

  The accounts then posted about food shortages in the Central Asian country caused by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and cheered on pro-Ukrainian protests in those places.

  Another set of accounts targeting audiences in the Middle East praised USAID's work in Iraq and discussed positive interactions between U.S. troops and Syrian children.

  The Central Asian country-focused account group also mentioned USAID, with 94 mentions on Twitter and 384 on Facebook, while praising Washington as a reliable economic partner that could help reduce the region's stinging of Russia dependency.

  However, these actions did not attract a large audience.

The researchers noted that most posts and tweets received only "few" likes or retweets, and only 19 percent of the undercover accounts identified had more than 1,000 followers.