Meta removes fake accounts targetting Sikh community: Details here

Meta, a popular social media platform, has released its first-quarter adversarial threat report. The company shared detailed data about the communities and pages that could pose a global threat. As per the report, Meta has removed around 37 Facebook accounts, 13 Pages and 9 Instagram accounts and 5 groups for violating policies against coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

Meta’s Q1 Adversarial threat report: Global threats

A network originated from China that was responsible for these activities, was targeting the global Sikh community, which were based in regions like India, Canada, Pakistan, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Nigeria. This network extended its operations to multiple platforms, including Telegram and X (formerly known as Twitter), with several clusters of fake accounts. These accounts were further linked to an unattributed Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) network which was being operated from China, and was earlier targeting India and the Tibet region, disrupted by Meta in early 2023.

Several fake accounts were created to mislead the users, prompting Meta to take preventive measures by removing these communities and pages. Threat actors from all over the world have continuously used profile photos, which were generated by generative adversarial networks (GAN) for their fake accounts. 

Despite this approach, Meta’s ability to detect inauthentic networks remains unaffected.

Operation K: Pro-Sikh activist movement

One deceptive network from China shared poster images, which were likely generated by using AI, for ‘Operation K’- a fictitious pro-Sikh activist movement. This activity highlighted the ongoing efforts by malicious actors to exploit social media platforms by spreading misinformation and influence public opinion.

Eva Fors, Managing Director, of Google Cloud Nordic Region, commented: “We’re happy to elevate our long-standing cooperation with Meta by powering its AI innovation within the browser space. We believe the future of AI will be open, providing access to the best of Google’s infrastructure, AI products, platforms, and foundation models to empower organizations to chart their course with generative AI.”

Meta has been continuously working to detect and remove inauthentic behaviour to demonstrate its commitment for maintaining the integrity of its platforms and protecting it’s platform users from any misleading information.

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