Meta对中国秘密水军行动展开大规模打击

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Meta对中国秘密水军行动展开大规模打击

SHEERA FRENKEL2023年8月31日On Feb. 27, an article claiming that the United States was behind the bombing of the Nord Stream underwater pipelines in the Baltic Sea was published on the Substack and Blogspot blogging platforms.2月27日，Substack和Blogspot这两家博客平台发布了一篇文章，称美国是炸毁波罗的海北溪海底管道的幕后黑手。Within 24 hours, the article — and other versions of it — had been posted to more websites, including Reddit, Medium, Tumblr, Facebook and YouTube. Translations of the article in Greek, German, Russian, Italian and Turkish also began appearing online.在不到24小时的时间里，这篇文章——连同它另外的版本——被发布到了更多网站上，包括Reddit、Medium、Tumblr、Facebook和YouTube。它的希腊语、德语、俄语、意语和土耳其语翻译版也开始出现在网上。The posts were part of a Chinese influence campaign that stands out as the largest such operation to date, researchers at Meta said in a report on Tuesday. The effort, which the company said had started with Chinese law enforcement and was discovered in 2019, was aimed at advancing China’s interests and discrediting its adversaries, such as the United States, Meta said.Meta公司的研究人员在周二发布的一份报告中称，这些帖子是中国发起的迄今为止规模最大的影响行动的其中一环。Meta表示，这场行动由中国执法部门带头，于2019年被揭露，意在推动有利于中国的叙事，并抹黑美国等对手。In total, 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook groups and 15 Instagram accounts tied to the Chinese campaign were removed by Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Hundreds of other accounts on TikTok, X, LiveJournal and Blogspot also participated in the campaign, which researchers named Spamouflage, for the frequent posting of spamlike messages, according to Meta’s report.总计有7704个Facebook账号、954个Facebook页面、15个Facebook群组和15个Instagram账号被Meta删除，它们都与该中国行动有关。Meta旗下拥有Facebook、Instagram和WhatsApp。Meta的报告称，TikTok、X、LiveJournal和Blogspot上也有数以百计的账号参与了这场研究人员所谓的“水军伪装”(Spamouflage)行动，之所以叫这个名字，是因为这些账号频繁发布类似垃圾邮件的信息。“This is the biggest single takedown of a single network we have ever conducted,” said Ben Nimmo, who heads Meta’s security team that looks at global threats. “When you put it together with all the activity we took down across the internet, we concluded it is the largest covert campaign that we know of today.”“这是我们有史以来针对单一网络组织进行的规模最大的一次性打击，”Meta负责研究全球威胁的安全小组组长本·尼莫表示。“把它和我们在互联网上拦截的所有活动结合起来，我们得出的结论是，这是我们目前所知的最大规模的秘密行动。”“这是我们有史以来针对单一网络组织进行的最大规模的一次性打击，”Meta负责研究全球威胁的安全小组组长本·尼莫表示。The Chinese campaign struggled to reach people and attract attention, Mr. Nimmo said. Some posts were riddled with spelling errors and poor grammar, while others were incongruent, such as random links under Quora articles that people could see had nothing to do with the subject being discussed.尼莫表示，这场中国行动并没能触及广泛受众并获得热度。一些帖子充斥着拼写错误和糟糕语法，还有一些则不知所云，比如Quora文章下的随机链接，与讨论主题完全无关。Yet the operation is being disclosed at a delicate time in the relationship between the United States and China. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is in China this week to talk with government officials and Chinese business leaders about trade relations. She is the fourth senior U.S. official to travel to China in less than three months.然而，此次行动的披露正值美中关系走到一个微妙节点。商务部长吉娜·雷蒙多本周正在中国与政府官员及中国商界领袖就贸易关系举行会谈。她是不到三个月时间里第四位访华的美国高官。The influence operation was the seventh from China that Meta has removed in the last six years. Four of them were found in the last year, said the company, which published details of the new operation as part of a quarterly security report.这是Meta在过去六年里清除的第七次来自中国的影响行动。该公司表示，其中四次是在去年发现的，最新这次的细节则被披露在该公司的季度安全报告中。周一，商务部长雷蒙多在北京参加会谈。The effort appeared to “learn and mimic” Russian-style influence operations, Meta said. It also appeared aimed at a broad audience. At times, posts were in Chinese on websites such as the Chinese financial forum Nanyangmoney. At other times, posts were in Russian, German, French, Korean, Thai and Welsh on sites such as Facebook and Instagram, which are banned in China.Meta表示，该行动似乎是在“学习和模仿”俄式影响活动。它针对的似乎是更广泛的受众。某些情况下，在南洋财经论坛等网站上发布的内容是中文。而另一些情况下，在Facebook和Instagram等被中国封禁的网站上发布的内容则为俄语、德语、法语、韩语、泰语和威尔士语。Chinese law enforcement appeared to work on the campaign from offices spread throughout the country, Meta said. Each office appeared to work in shifts, with activity in the midmorning and early afternoon, and breaks for lunch and dinner, the report said.Meta称，这项行动似乎在中国执法部门遍布全国各地的办事处展开。报告称，各地办事处似乎在轮值工作，其活动分布在上午和午后，午饭和晚饭时间都出现暂停。The accounts frequently posted identical messages on different social media platforms, in a timed effort to spread pro-China messaging online. The network was “wide and noisy,” Mr. Nimmo said, but struggled to reach people partly because “it was the same comment many times a day.”这些账号往往会在不同社交媒体平台上发布相似内容，定时在网上传播亲中国的信息。尼莫表示，这一网络组织“庞大嘈杂”，难以触及受众的部分原因在于“同样的评论一天内会重复很多次”。“It was as if they copied them from a numbered list and forgot to proofread them before they posted,” he added.“就好像它们是从编号列表里复制出来，发布之前忘了校对一样，”他补充道。While Meta has removed the campaign from Facebook and Instagram, many of the operation’s accounts on platforms like X, Reddit and TikTok remain online, according to a review by The New York Times.《纽约时报》审阅发现，虽然Meta已在Facebook和Instagram清除了该行动，但在X、Reddit和TikTok等平台，与该行动相关的许多账号依然活跃。The effort was discovered in 2019 by Mr. Nimmo and other researchers at Graphika, a company that studies social media. Meta said that it had removed elements of the operation in recent years, but that the campaign had kept returning with new accounts and tactics.尼莫和来自Graphika的其他研究员在2019年发现了这场行动，Graphika是一家社交媒体分析公司。Meta称近年来已经删除了部分内容，但该行动的新账号和新策略依然源源不断地重现。The operation initially focused on discrediting the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. In February 2020, the effort shifted to the outbreak of Covid-19, deflecting assertions that China was the origin of the virus and focusing blame on the United States.该行动起初的重点是抹黑2019年香港的民主抗议活动。2020年2月，重点转向新冠疫情暴发，转移病毒起源于中国的说法，并将责任归咎于美国。In one instance, the operation published a 66-page research paper falsely claiming that Covid had started in the United States. It appeared on the website Zenodo, an online repository for researchers and academics to upload papers and data sets.在一个案例中，该行动发布了一篇66页的研究论文，错误宣称新冠疫情始于美国。这篇文章出现在Zenodo网站上，这是一个供研究人员和学者上传论文和数据集的线上存储库。YouTube and Vimeo videos then promoted the research paper, along with posts on blogging platforms including LiveJournal, Tumblr and Medium that argued that the United States had hidden Covid’s true origins. Links to those posts were then published on Facebook and other social media sites, though many of the posts were not widely read.随后就出现了宣传该论文的YouTube和Vimeo视频，还有LiveJournal、Tumblr和Medium等博客平台发布的文章，辩称美国隐瞒了新冠病毒的真实源头。再之后，这些内容的链接被发到Facebook和其他社交媒体网站上，但很多帖子的阅读量并不大。In June 2020, the network began posting English-language videos on YouTube and TikTok that highlighted racial disparities in the United States, in an apparent effort to inflame divisions. Some of those videos went viral.2020年6月，该网络组织开始在YouTube和TikTok上发布关注美国种族不平等的英语视频，目的显然在于挑起分歧。其中一些视频热度很高。Meta also included links in its report to TikTok accounts that it said had been part of the Chinese operation. One of the most popular videos, which The Times viewed, showed a woman arguing in Chinese that life in Xinjiang, a far northwestern region of China, was peaceful. China has been under international scrutiny for carrying out repressive policies against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in the region.Meta还在报告中列出了指向TikTok账号的链接，称这些账号都属于该中国行动的一部分。在时报查看的热度最高的一段视频中，一名女子用中文辩称，在位于中国西北偏远地区的新疆，人民的生活是祥和的。中国因对新疆维吾尔人和其他穆斯林少数民族实施镇压政策而受到了国际社会的密切关注。The TikTok video was viewed more than 7,000 times.那段TikTok视频的观看次数超过7000次。Sheera Frenke驻洛杉矶，是一名有过获奖经历的科技记者。2021年，她与Cecilia Kang共同出版了《An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination》一书。点击查看更多关于她的信息。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。

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