Meta Disrupts Influence Operations in Romania, Iran & China: Fake Personas Exposed

Meta has dis­rupt­ed influ­ence oper­a­tions in Roma­nia, along­side Iran­ian and Chi­nese net­works, as the social media giant revealed coor­di­nat­ed take­downs dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2025. On 30 May 2025, The Hack­er News report­ed that Meta removed three covert influ­ence oper­a­tions tar­get­ing Roma­nia, Azer­bai­jan, Tai­wan, and oth­er regions using sophis­ti­cat­ed fake per­sona net­works. The Roman­ian oper­a­tion involved 658 Face­book accounts, 14 Pages, and two Insta­gram accounts that mas­quer­ad­ed as locals while com­ment­ing on polit­i­cal con­tent and direct­ing users to exter­nal websites.

The arti­cle begins:

Meta on Thurs­day revealed that it dis­rupt­ed three covert influ­ence oper­a­tions orig­i­nat­ing from Iran, Chi­na, and Roma­nia dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2025. “We detect­ed and removed these cam­paigns before they were able to build authen­tic audi­ences on our apps,” the social media giant said in its quar­ter­ly Adver­sar­i­al Threat Report. This includ­ed a net­work of 658 accounts on Face­book, 14 Pages, and two accounts on Insta­gram that tar­get­ed Roma­nia across sev­er­al plat­forms, includ­ing Meta’s ser­vices, Tik­Tok, X, and YouTube. One of the pages in ques­tion had about 18,300 fol­low­ers. The threat actors behind the activ­i­ty lever­aged fake accounts to man­age Face­book Pages, direct users to off-plat­form web­sites, and share com­ments on posts by politi­cians and news enti­ties. The accounts mas­quer­ad­ed as locals liv­ing in Roma­nia and post­ed con­tent relat­ed to sports, trav­el, or local news.

          Read more: https://thehackernews.com/2025/05/meta-disrupts-influence-ops-targeting.html

Key Points

• The Roman­ian oper­a­tion used proxy IP infra­struc­ture and sophis­ti­cat­ed oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty to con­ceal its ori­gins while post­ing about elec­tions and cur­rent events in Romanian
• Iran­ian net­work Storm-2035 tar­get­ed Azeri-speak­ing audi­ences with 60 fake accounts pos­ing as female jour­nal­ists and pro-Pales­tine activists across mul­ti­ple platforms.
• Chi­nese-ori­gin clus­ters used AI-gen­er­at­ed pro­file pho­tos to tar­get Myan­mar, Tai­wan, and Japan with con­tent sup­port­ing mil­i­tary jun­tas and crit­i­ciz­ing gov­ern­ment ties with the US
• Meta detect­ed and removed all cam­paigns before they could build authen­tic audi­ences, pre­vent­ing suc­cess­ful manip­u­la­tion of pub­lic dis­course in tar­get­ed regions.

Facebook and Influence Operations: Global Disinformation Tactics

Face­book has become a pri­ma­ry are­na for glob­al influ­ence oper­a­tions, with the plat­form repeat­ed­ly uncov­er­ing and dis­man­tling sophis­ti­cat­ed net­works such as the largest and most com­plex Russ­ian oper­a­tion ever and the “Cyber Front Z” cam­paign that lever­aged thou­sands of fake accounts to spread pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives. Inves­ti­ga­tions have high­light­ed how key pro-Putin accounts gen­er­at­ed mil­lions of coor­di­nat­ed posts, while oth­er state actors, such as Chi­na, have qui­et­ly built net­works of influ­encers to push pro­pa­gan­da and pur­chased Face­book ads pro­mot­ing Russia’s stance on the Ukraine war.

Iran and domes­tic polit­i­cal actors have exploit­ed the plat­form as well, with net­works of fake accounts linked to Iran and pro-Trump groups respon­si­ble for decep­tive Face­book ads. Despite Facebook’s ini­tia­tives to counter dis­in­for­ma­tion in elec­tions and its take­downs of Covid-19 false­hood net­works, stud­ies con­tin­ue to reveal sig­nif­i­cant gaps, such as the platform’s fail­ure to label 80% of posts pro­mot­ing bioweapons con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. These oper­a­tions demon­strate the per­sis­tent and evolv­ing threat of coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior on Face­book, a trend cor­rob­o­rat­ed by research from the Oxford Inter­net Insti­tute and major inves­tiga­tive report­ing, which doc­u­ment Facebook’s cen­tral role in the glob­al infor­ma­tion war­fare landscape.

Exter­nal References:

1. The Glob­al Dis­in­for­ma­tion Order: 2019 Glob­al Inven­to­ry of Organ­ised Social Media Manip­u­la­tion – Oxford Inter­net Institute

2. Meta takes down thou­sands of Face­book accounts linked to Rus­sia, Chi­na influ­ence campaigns

3. Meta removes Chi­nese accounts spread­ing Covid misinformation

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.