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       4,789 Facebook Accounts in China Impersonated Americans, Meta Says

       The company warned that the inauthentic accounts underscored the threat of foreign election interference in 2024.

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       Meta warned that a campaign in China underscored the threat facing an unusual confluence of elections in democracies around the world in 2024. Credit...Aaron Wojack for The New York Times

       By Steven Lee Myers

       Nov. 30, 2023

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       Meta announced on Thursday that it had removed thousands of Facebook accounts based in China that were impersonating Americans debating political issues in the United States. The company warned that the campaign presaged coordinated international efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election.

       The network of fake accounts — 4,789 in all — used names and photographs lifted from elsewhere on the internet and copied partisan political content from X, formerly known as Twitter, Meta said in its latest quarterly adversarial threat analysis. The copied material included posts by prominent Republican and Democratic politicians, the report said.

       The campaign appeared intended not to favor one side or another but to highlight the deep divisions in American politics, a tactic that Russia’s influence campaigns have used for years in the United States and elsewhere.

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       Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington, Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” More about Steven Lee Myers

       A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 1, 2023, Section B , Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Meta Erases 4,789 Chinese Accounts That Mimicked Americans . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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