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Facebook and Instagram Will Remove Accounts Linked to a Chinese Effort to Spread Coronavirus Disinformation

Meta on Wednesday announced that it had removed hundreds of accounts, pages and groups linked to a Chinese effort to spread disinformation around the United States pressuring the World Health Organization (WHO) to blame the COVID-19 pandemic on China.

According to Meta’s Adversarial Threat Report, which detailed takedowns of networks in multiple countries linked to inauthentic coordinated behavior on Facebook and other social media platforms, the effort began in July with a single Facebook account purporting to be a Swiss biologist named Wilson Edwards.

The fake account linked to Edwards, who Swiss authorities later confirmed to Meta does not exist, claimed that U.S. authorities were pressuring WHO scientists to pin the blame for the COVID-19 pandemic on China. Within two days, the post had been reported on by Chinese state media and spread by hundreds of social media accounts. 

Read the source article at The Hill

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