The image is by Alex Castro.
A tale of international intrigue that seems more like a movie than a campaign to spread misinformation is contained in Facebook's November report on Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior. On July 24th, a Swiss Biologist named Wilson Edwards claimed on social media that the US was pressuring the WHO to study the origins of COVID-19.
Within a week, the Global Times and People's Daily, two state-run Chinese media outlets, were condemning Wilson Edwards' claims as "intimidation" by the US, as his claims spread quickly on social media. China refused to accept a plan by the WHO for a second phase study into the origins of the coronaviruses, so Wilson created a Facebook account.
Have you figured out the plot twist yet? According to the Swiss Embassy in Beijing, there is no Swiss citizen by the name of Wilson Edwards. We would like to meet you. The embassy called on the Chinese press and the internet to take down the posts, saying it was more likely that the news was a fake.
The Wilson Edwards account was taken down by Facebook the same day the Swiss embassy posted about it. Ben Nimmo, global IO threat intel lead at Facebook parent company Meta, wrote that the Wilson Edwards account was part of a misinformation campaign that originated in China.
:noupscale is a file with a link to achorusasset.
The fake profile picture of one of the fake accounts liked by Meta.
The photo is Meta.
Nimmo says that the campaign was a hall of mirrors. The initial spread of the Wilson Edwards story on Facebook was inauthentic, as well as hundreds of fake accounts, which were created by employees of Chinese state infrastructure companies.
Meta says there are only a few real people who are engaged with Wilson Edwards, despite the The scam spent less than $5,000 on ads on the two social media sites.
Over the past four years, we haven't seen successful IO campaigns built on fake engagement tactics, which is consistent with what we've seen in our research of covert influence operations. The content liked by these crude fake accounts would be only seen by their fake friends. We all know what happens to sham friends.
The group of fake accounts that Meta connected to the Wilson Edwards scheme, along with some people associated with information security firm Silence in China, have made other attempts at influence operations that were typically small-scale and of negligible impact.
Wilson Edwards won't try to catfish any other international health organizations. If we could get someone to stop the people from calling about the car warranty, that would be great.
