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Global tech giant Meta detected and eliminated 18 fake accounts from Facebook that were found to be part of Chinese covert influence operations aimed at discrediting the Dalai Lama and spreading false information about the Tibetan spiritual leader’s health.
Meta revealed this in its fourth quarter 2024 Adversarial Threat Report, which also said the company removed two pages, four groups, and five Instagram accounts.
All of the removed accounts and pages originated in China and were meant to target the Tibetan exile community, especially in India, Nepal and Bhutan, across multiple online platforms including Facebook and Instagram, as well as X, and Blogspot, Meta said.
“The individuals behind this activity used fake accounts – many of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems before our investigation – to manage Pages, post, and amplify other people’s content," Meta said in the report. “They used proxy IPs to conceal their origin and appear to be coming from India, Bhutan, or Nepal.”
One of the fake accounts posed as a journalist in India’s northeastern border state of Arunachal Pradesh, while most of the others pretended to be Tibetan expats, who primarily re-shared content and news related to Tibet and amplified anti-Dalai Lama posts, Meta said.
“The network posted mainly in English and Tibetan about news related to Tibet and its politics, including criticism of exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, conspiracies about his travel and health, and claims that the United States is using him as a lever against China,” the report said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said Meta’s report “disregards facts and confuses right and wrong,” according to spokesperson Liu Pengyu.
“China firmly opposes this. I would like to emphasize that Tibet affairs are purely China’s internal affairs and no external forces are allowed to interfere,” said Liu. “The 14th Dalai Lama is a political exile in religious guise. He has long been engaged in anti-China separatist activities and attempted to split Tibet from China.”
Remaining vigilant
Tenzin Lekshay, a spokesperson for the Dharamsala, India-based government-in-exile called the Central Tibetan Administration, told RFA Tibetan that he welcomed Meta’s investigation, and urged Tibetan exiles to remain vigilant against accounts that harm Tibetan unity and defame the Dalai Lama.
Using social media for covert operations is nothing new, Sriparna Pathak, associate professor of China studies at the O.P. Jindal Global University in Haryana, India, told RFA.
“China has been at it for years,” she said, adding that Beijing has added AI-driven tactics to disinformation campaigns in order to control narratives and suppress dissent, particularly regarding Tibet.
Meta’s investigation is significant in that it confirms suspicions about China’s online activities, Lobsang Gyatso Sither, Director of Technology at the Tibet Action Institute, which develops community specific technologies and educational content, told RFA.
“It serves as concrete proof ... about Chinese government interference in the exile community,” he said. “It’s critical that Tibetans avoid befriending suspicious accounts on social media platforms like Facebook and report them.”
Meta said it found the latest activity as a result of the social media giant’s internal investigation into suspected recidivist activity linked to the networks it removed and reported in its third-quarter of 2023 report.
In that report, Meta said it removed 12 accounts and seven groups that originated in China and targeted Tibet and India’s Arunachal Pradesh region.
These posts, Meta said, had violated its policy against what it calls ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior,’ which it defines as coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal through the use of fake accounts to mislead others.
Meta said in the 2024 fourth quarter report that about 2,400 accounts followed one or more of the Facebook Pages that it removed, and 120 accounts joined one or more of the four groups it removed. Meanwhile, about 100 accounts followed at least one of the five removed Instagram accounts.
“We took down this network before its operators were able to build an audience among authentic communities on our apps,” Meta said.
Additional reporting by Dorjee Damdul and Tenzin Norzom. Edited by Tenzin Pema, Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.