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Facebook took down a MAJOR COVID-19 disinformation campaign tied to China and promoted by government officials

Facebook announced that it took down a major disinformation campaign tied to China that sought to discredit investigations in the origin of COVID-19:

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From Vice:

On July 24 of this year, a Facebook user who claimed to be a Swiss biologist called Wilson Edwards wrote a post criticizing the US government for allegedly intimidating the World Health Organization to keep investigating the origins of COVID-19 in China.

“WHO sources and a number of fellow researchers complained that they had endured enormous pressure and even intimidation from the U.S. side,” Edwards wrote in the post, according to a screenshot provided by Facebook. “The WHO sources told me that the U.S. is so obsessed with attacking China on the origin-tracing issue that it is reluctant to open its eyes to the data and findings.”

According to the article, this was a coordinated disinformation campaign that “used more than 500 fake accounts, 20 pages, four groups, and 86 Instagram accounts”:

Chinese government officials then engaged with and promoted the bogus accounts:

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An official at Facebook said, “This is the first time we’ve seen an operation that included a coordinated cluster of state employees amplifying itself in this way”:

Weird. Why is China so desperate to prevent investigations into the origin of COVID-19? We may never know. . .

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