Royal Malaysia Police denies link to troll farm alleged by Meta, 596 accounts removed

Meta has removed a troll farm linked to the Royal Malaysian Police active across its platforms Facebook and Instagram. According to Meta the troll farm posted memes in Malay, supporting the current government coalition and the police while accusing its critics and the opposition of corruption across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and witter, according to Meta's quarterly adversarial threat report for the second quarter of 2022. However, the Royal Malaysian Police has issued a statement denying its involvement in the troll farm, and is collecting more information about the incident. 

According to Meta's report, the troll farm managed Facebook pages and posed as independent news entities while using fairly under developed fake accounts with stolen profile pictures to target domestic audiences in Malaysia. Their posting activities usually peaked during the weekdays, while taking breaks for lunch. Some of the accounts were detected and disabled by its automated systems. Meta identified the troll farm following information about a small portion of its activity initially suspected to have originated in China, by researchers at Clemson University.

Meta has removed 596 Facebook accounts, 180 Facebook pages, 11 Facebook groups and 72 Instagram accounts for violating its policy against coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB). Around 427,000 accounts followed one or more of these pages, 4,000 accounts joined one or more of these groups, and 15,000 accounts followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.

Additionally, the troll farm spent around RM6,000 for advertising on Facebook and Instagram, the report stated.

According to Meta, CIB is where groups of pages or people work together to mislead others about who they are, or what they do. Meta removes them based on their deceptive behaviour. A+M has reached out to Meta for additional information. 

Meta's public threat reporting began around five years ago when it first shared its findings about CIB by a Russian influence operation. Since then, it expanded its ability to respond to a wider range of adversarial behaviours as global threats have continued to evolve. It expanded its regular threat reports to include cyber espionage, inauthentic behaviour, and other emerging harms. Other than the roll farm originating in Malaysia, Meta also took down two other networks involved in CIB operations including a network related to a PR firm in Israel, and one in Russia which targeted global discourse relating to the Russia-Ukraine war. 

Online scams and misinformation have been rampant in Malaysia. In April, Meta spoke up about a series of scam ads allegedly appearing on its Facebook platform which attempted to pass off as real ads from The Star and The Sun daily. These ads were also reportedly finance-related and made promises about ways to earn money without paying taxes or owning a luxury car. Meanwhile, just a few days ago, the Malaysian police warned the public on social media of an on going SMS scam message from the MySejahtera app for financial aid through Touch ‘n Go's e-wallet. Victims have received fake links from unknown numbers claiming that MySejahtera has credited their COVID-19 financial aid.

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