According to a statement from Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s Head of Security Policy the fake news pages were linked to state-owned telcoms companies, namely Myanmar’s Mytel and Vietnam’s Viettel. In total, Facebook removed 13 accounts and 10 pages that violated its rules. The pages used memes and “news” about other companies to discredit them in the eyes of consumers. Gleicher said the accounts sneakily tried throw shade at other telcom companies: Facebook was able to trace the posts to both the telcom providers and a Vietnamese PR firm. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found that one of the tactics the pages used was to encourage users to dial a particular code to access 10 extra gbs of data. This would have the effect of blocking the outgoing calls, making it look like the code (which had been “provided” by the rival telcom companies) was a dud. Mytel’s pages offered a convenient fix. Facebook estimates about $1.2 million was spent on this campaign, and around 265,600 accounts followed one or more of the phony pages. Viettel spokespeople told The Financial Times that it didn’t condone these kinds of tactics and it was conducting an internal review to verify Facebook’s claims. According to Gleicher, Facebook also unearthed a major disinformation campaign out of Russia, the major focus of which appeared to be Ukraine. In that case, Facebook found links to Russian military intelligence services. Research firm Graphika did the thankless job of picking through the assets Facebook unearthed, and found some of the pages were successful in pitching their stories to news outlets, including one which contributed 100 articles to a Moldovan newspaper.
