And meta found bad actors from China may be trying
to influence upcoming American political elections. The company said
it found two networks from China trying to quote manipulate
public debate. China news, senior reporter Michelle Castillo
is closely following this case, Michelle, what exactly
did meta reveal in this new report? Foreign groups
have always tried to influence American political opinion on meta
Duarte and while the majority are still coming from Russia
and Iran, a growing number is now coming from
China. So in its latest quarterly report on adversarial
threats, meta said it was noticing more accounts from
China trying coordinate in authentic behavior or what they call
cib. Now these groups try to sow discord through
comments and political debate online. This past quarter meta
found three CIB networks, two of which came from
China and one came from Russia and one of those
Chinese networks for to get this had 4780 Facebook accounts
that Facebook had to deactivate. The company added that
these profiles were usually fake accounts which used real people's
names and friend of people from across the world.
However, these accounts pretended to be American and posted
similar messages across different platforms including on X and some
of those are still active today. Now these posts
were about us, politics or us China relations and
meta added that multiple organizations were behind these influence groups
. They found tech firms in China and even one
that was connected to Chinese law enforcement. Now,
a Chinese government spokesperson told NBC news, it was
unaware of an influence campaign. But for comparison between
2017 and 2020 meta only took down two Chinese networks
that kind of worked in a similar manner. And
both of those networks were only focused on the Asia
Pacific region. The election is coming up really quickly
. 2024 what is meta doing to help prevent election
fraud through its platform, Michelle? Well, for
the most part meta's policies towards ele election manipulation haven't
changed orte, but there are gonna be some additions
to make sure that people are safer at this time
. For one, the company will not allow new
political ads in the week leading up to the US
. Elections. Also, if candidates are using A
I or other digital tools, they will have to
disclose that it was altered or created with those methods
when they're making advertising. So this might include,
let's say an image that might have been digitally changed
to show something that didn't really occur like a candidate
in front of a crowd or if audio was edited
to depict a real person. Now this rule isn't
just for the US based campaigns. It's actually for
all election ads on meta. The company has also
employed about 40,000 people to monitor election campaigns and have
invested more than$20 billion in election safety since 2016
. It also works with about 100 partners in more
than 60 languages to fact check. Information Michelle in
other meta news meta is bringing threads to a new
region. Where is this going? Well, threads
may be coming to Europe. George sources told the
Wall Street Journal that the company is eyeing a December
launch date for the tech space micro blogging platform.
Now, the European Union has strict privacy laws.
So meta is gonna have to make some concessions and
one of those includes not requiring users to have a
different meta account to sign up for the service because
you might remember here in the US, threads accounts
are linked to Instagram. Now during its latest quarterly
report, Ceo Mark Zuckerberg said threads had just under
100 million users and Europe is sure to add to
that number if it does start there. Thanks so
much Michelle Castillo.