Fake Accounts Calling for 'Pro-Sikh Protests' Were Created in China, Meta Finds

Scale: Meta said that it took down over 37 Facebook accounts, 13 Pages, five Groups, and nine accounts on Instagram for displaying coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

Reach: “About 2,700 accounts followed one or more of these Pages, about 1,300 accounts joined one or more of these Groups, and under 100 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts,” the report said.

Target: Besides Facebook and Instagram, Meta said that it had detected clusters of fake accounts displaying such activity on Telegram and X (formerly Twitter). One such cluster with “links to an unattributed CIB network from China targeting India and the Tibet region” was found to have sprouted up again despite being taken down by the big tech company in early 2023.

The intent: “Some of these clusters amplified one another with most of their engagement coming from their own fake accounts, likely to make this campaign [Operation K] appear more popular than it was,” the report further said.

Modus operandi: By taking over compromised accounts and creating fake ones, the report said that the operatives posed as Sikhs and proceeded to post content as well as manage Pages and Groups.

Type of content: “They posted primarily in English and Hindi about news and current events,” Meta’s report said.

However, Meta also said, “We have not seen threat actors use photo-realistic AI-generated media of politicians as a broader trend at this time.”