Although it was largely ineffective due to the time difference between China and the US, it was taken down by Meta.
According to a Tuesday blogpost by Ben Nimmo, Meta's global threat intelligence lead and David Agranovich, the company's director of threat disruption, the network originated in China.
According to a company executive at a press conference on Tuesday, Meta didn't have enough evidence to identify who was behind the China operation.
Meta stated in its report that the network used tactics. Two clusters under the network targeted both sides of the political spectrum in the US.
There were two examples of what the network disseminated in the Meta show. One year in, nothing is built, nothing is back, and nothing is better. The other meme showed a photo of a man with the words "Democracy for sale" written on it.
The influence operation failed as the US-focused clusters only attracted minimal reactions to their posts.
Workers in China were working regular nine-to-five shifts and taking long lunches. They had a substantial lunch break and a lower level of posting during the weekend. The operation was mostly posted when Americans were asleep.
Some of the accounts used bad English. Some accounts shared the same post but didn't post for a week. "Linguistic errors were included in the post, 'I can't live in an America on regression!'" according to Meta.
Even though the China-based influence operation didn't work, it's significant because it's the first Chinese network to disrupt US politics. According to Meta, "Chinese influence operations that we've disrupted before typically focused on attacking the United States to international audiences, rather than targeting domestic audiences in the US."
It said in a Tuesday post that it had taken down a Russia disinformation network. Over 60 fake websites of real European news organizations were used by this network to post articles in support of Russia.
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