Meta announced on Thursday that it disrupted three covert influence campaigns 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 company stated in its quarterly Adversarial Threat Report.
One operation involved a network of 658 Facebook accounts, 14 Pages, and two Instagram accounts targeting Romania across several platforms, including Meta’s services, TikTok, X, and YouTube. One of the Pages had around 18,300 followers.
The threat actors behind this campaign used fake accounts to manage Facebook Pages, direct users to off-platform websites, and comment on posts by politicians and news outlets. These accounts posed as locals from Romania and shared content related to sports, travel, and local news. Although most of the comments received little to no engagement from real users, Meta explained that these fake personas also appeared on other platforms to enhance their credibility.
"This campaign demonstrated consistent operational security (OpSec) to hide its origin and coordination by using proxy IP infrastructure," the company noted. "Those involved posted mainly in Romanian about news and current events, including topics related to elections."
A second influence operation that Meta took down originated in Iran and focused on Azeri-speaking users in Azerbaijan and Turkey. This network spanned Facebook, X, and YouTube, and included 17 Facebook accounts, 22 Pages, and 21 Instagram accounts.
These fake accounts posted content in Groups, managed Pages, and commented on their own content to boost visibility. Many of them pretended to be female journalists or pro-Palestinian activists.
"The operation also used trending hashtags such as #palestine, #gaza, #starbucks, and #instagram to try to engage with ongoing public discussions," Meta said.
"The operators posted in Azeri about news and current affairs, including the Paris Olympics, Israel's 2024 airstrikes, boycotts of American brands, and criticism of the U.S., President Biden, and Israel’s actions in Gaza."
This activity has been linked to a threat group known as Storm-2035. Microsoft had earlier described this Iranian cluster in August 2024 as targeting U.S. voter groups with polarizing messages about presidential candidates, LGBTQ rights, and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In recent months, AI company OpenAI also reported banning ChatGPT accounts linked to Storm-2035. These accounts were reportedly used to create content intended for distribution on social media.
Meta also disclosed that it removed 157 Facebook accounts, 19 Pages, one Group, and 17 Instagram accounts that targeted audiences in Myanmar, Taiwan, and Japan. The actors behind this campaign reportedly used AI-generated profile photos and operated an "account farm" to produce new fake accounts.
The China-linked campaign was divided into three distinct clusters. These groups reposted both their own content and that of others in English, Burmese, Mandarin, and Japanese, focusing on news and events relevant to their target countries.
"In Myanmar, the posts called for an end to the ongoing conflict, criticized civil resistance movements, and expressed support for the military government," Meta explained.
"In Japan, the campaign attacked the government and its military ties with the U.S. In Taiwan, the posts alleged corruption among politicians and military leaders, and included Pages that claimed to display anonymously submitted content, possibly to create the illusion of genuine public discourse.
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