DISARMframeworks/generated_pages/incidents/I00088.md

Incident I00088: Much Ado About ‘Somethings’ - China-Linked Influence Operation Endures Despite Takedown

• Summary: “Beneath a video on Facebook about the war between Israel and Hamas, Lamonica Trout commented, “America is the war monger, the Jew’s own son!” She left identical comments beneath the same video on two other Facebook pages. Trout’s profile provides no information besides her name. It lists no friends, and there is not a single post or photograph in her feed. Trout’s profile photo shows an alligator.
  
  “Lamonica Trout is likely an invention of the group behind Spamouflage, an ongoing, multi-year influence operation that promotes Beijing’s interests. Last year, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, took down 7,704 accounts and 954 pages it identified as part of the Spamouflage operation, which it described as the “largest known cross-platform influence operation [Meta had] disrupted to date.” Facebook’s terms of service prohibit a range of deceptive and inauthentic behaviors, including efforts to conceal the purpose of social media activity or the identity of those behind it.
  
  “This research report documents a previously unrecognized component on Facebook of Spamouflage, which operates over 450 pages and user profiles, including Lamonica Trout, as part of a coordinated effort to promote anti-American and anti-Western narratives. One hub of this activity is the community page known as “The War of Somethings,” which has around 2,000 likes and 3,000 followers — although many of those are likely to be no more real than Lamonica Trout.
  
  “The broader War of Somethings (WoS) network, so dubbed because all the Facebook pages and user accounts in the network are connected to “The War of Somethings” behaves very similarly to previous Spamouflage campaigns. The WoS network has targeted Guo Wengui, a wealthy Chinese businessman in exile, who is also a frequent target of Spamouflage. Previous analyses named the group Spamouflage because it posts apolitical content to camouflage its political agenda, a tactic that the WoS network also employs. Like Spamouflage, the WoS network is active during the workday in China and uses inauthentic accounts, including invented personas and hijacked accounts, to promote its content. For these reasons and others, the WoS network is very likely a part of Spamouflage.
  
  “To date, the WoS network appears to have had almost no reach outside of its own echo chambers. Yet previous Spamouflage campaigns have broken out to wider audiences. Prominent individuals with a record of hostility toward the United States, such as Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza and British parliamentarian George Galloway, have shared Spamouflage content with their numerous followers.
  
  “As of July 2023, and possibly earlier, the WoS network has posted content explicitly related to the upcoming U.S. elections, a sign that Spamouflage may be preparing to interfere in the elections. To help prevent such manipulation, the authors have shared the data from this paper with Meta to facilitate enforcement of Facebook’s terms of service.
  
  “Though Spamouflage operates on other platforms, this report focuses on its Facebook activity. Its Facebook network may actually be larger than what is documented. Leveraging the information below, social media companies with access to internal data can better assess the full scale and scope.
  
  “Spamouflage and other enduring influence operations demonstrate that social media takedowns are necessary, but not sufficient, to combat foreign malign influence operations. The federal government also has a role to play: It should send clear and consistent messages to China and other state sponsors of such operations that there will be a price to pay for attempts at manipulating U.S. public opinion.”

• incident type:

• Year started:

• Countries: ,

• Found via:

• Date added:

Reference	Pub Date	Authors	Org	Archive
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/27/much-ado-about-somethings/	2024/03/27	Max Lesser, Ari Ben Am, Margot Fulde-Hardy, Saman Nazari, Paul J. Malcomb	Foundation for Defence of Democracies	https://web.archive.org/web/20240711220741/https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/27/much-ado-about-somethings/

Technique	Description given for this incident
T0085.008 Machine Translated Text	IT00000310 “The broader War of Somethings (WoS) network, so dubbed because all the Facebook pages and user accounts in the network are connected to “The War of Somethings” page,  behaves very similarly to previous Spamouflage campaigns. [Spamouflage is a coordinated inauthentic behaviour network attributed to the Chinese state.] “Like other components of Spamouflage, the WoS network sometimes intersperses apolitical content with its more agenda-driven material. Many members post nearly identical comments at almost the same time. The text includes markers of automatic translation while error messages included as profile photos indicate the automated pulling of stock images.” In this example analysts found an indicator of automated use of stock images in Facebook accounts; some of the accounts in the network appeared to have mistakenly uploaded error messages as profile pictures (T0145.006: Stock Image Account Imagery). The text posted by the accounts also appeared to have been translated using automation (T0085.008: Machine Translated Text).
T0145.002 AI-Generated Account Imagery	IT00000309 “The broader War of Somethings (WoS) network, so dubbed because all the Facebook pages and user accounts in the network are connected to “The War of Somethings” page,  behaves very similarly to previous Spamouflage campaigns. “Spamouflage is a coordinated inatuhentic behaviour network attributed to the Chinese state. “Despite the WoS network’s relative sophistication, there are tell-tale signs that it is an influence operation. Several user profile photos display signs of AI generation or do not match the profile’s listed gender.” A network of accounts connected to the facebook page “The War of Somethings” used AI-generated images of people as their profile picture (T0145.002: AI-Generated Account Imagery).
T0145.003 Animal Account Imagery	IT00000308 "“Beneath a video on Facebook about the war between Israel and Hamas, Lamonica Trout commented, “America is the war monger, the Jew’s own son!” She left identical comments beneath the same video on two other Facebook pages. Trout’s profile provides no information besides her name. It lists no friends, and there is not a single post or photograph in her feed. Trout’s profile photo shows an alligator. “Lamonica Trout is likely an invention of the group behind Spamouflage, an ongoing, multi-year influence operation that promotes Beijing’s interests. Last year, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, took down 7,704 accounts and 954 pages it identified as part of the Spamouflage operation, which it described as the “largest known cross-platform influence operation [Meta had] disrupted to date.”2 Facebook’s terms of service prohibit a range of deceptive and inauthentic behaviors, including efforts to conceal the purpose of social media activity or the identity of those behind it.” In this example an account attributed to a multi-year influence operation created the persona of Lamonica Trout in a Facebook account, which used an image of an animal in its profile picture (T0145.003: Animal Account Imagery)."
T0145.006 Attractive Person Account Imagery	IT00000311 “The broader War of Somethings (WoS) network, so dubbed because all the Facebook pages and user accounts in the network are connected to “The War of Somethings” page,  behaves very similarly to previous Spamouflage campaigns. [Spamouflage is a coordinated inauthentic behaviour network attributed to the Chinese state.] “Like other components of Spamouflage, the WoS network sometimes intersperses apolitical content with its more agenda-driven material. Many members post nearly identical comments at almost the same time. The text includes markers of automatic translation while error messages included as profile photos indicate the automated pulling of stock images.” In this example analysts found an indicator of automated use of stock images in Facebook accounts; some of the accounts in the network appeared to have mistakenly uploaded error messages as profile pictures (T0145.006: Stock Image Account Imagery). The text posted by the accounts also appeared to have been translated using automation (T0085.008: Machine Translated Text).

DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW