This disinformation campaign worked with the support of influencers, whom they recruited to share their publications on social networks

Facebook has detected and deleted about 300 accounts of its eponymous social network and Instagram linked to a marketing firm that were used to launch a disinformation campaign on COVID-19 vaccines and recruit influencers to share their content on social networks.

Facebook’s latest report on coordinated inauthentic behavior includes analysis of a disinformation campaign deployed from Russia and linked to the UK-based marketing firm Fazze, which was targeting audiences in Latin America, India and the United States.

This campaign was developed in two phases. The first, between November and December 2020, in which publications and comments against the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca were promoted, in which it was claimed that it would turn people into chimpanzees. The second, in May of this year, questioned the safety of the Pfizer.

This disinformation campaign worked with the support of influencers, whom they recruited to share their publications on social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, but also on TikTok and YouTube, where they already had an audience.

In general, and according to the Facebook report, the publications of these influencers hardly had an impact among their followers. Only paid content managed to attract some attention.

Facebook highlights the difficulty in identifying this campaign, which carried out its operations on multiple Internet services simultaneously. Once caught, the company removed 65 Facebook accounts and 243 Instagram accounts, and banned Fazze from its platforms.

This case is an example of the coordinated inauthentic behaviors that Facebook detects and fights in the company’s services. The July report shows that the elimination of 144 Facebook accounts and 262 Instagram accounts, as well as 13 pages and eight groups, from two networks located in Burma and Russia.

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