Meta Issues Report About How It Stopped 'Bad Memes' In Brazil And Purportedly Plans To Issue 'Zuck Bucks' In The Metaverse | Know Your Meme

Meta Issues Report About How It Stopped 'Bad Memes' In Brazil And Purportedly Plans To Issue 'Zuck Bucks' In The Metaverse

By Aidan Walker
14392 views
• Published 2 years ago

Published 2 years ago

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, issued its first-ever “Quarterly Threat Report” today, highlighting instances of cybercrime and influence operations that Meta tracked down and stopped over the first quarter of 2022. The report comes amid news that Meta may produce its own cryptocurrency, raising questions about the power of the massive tech company.


Meta’s goal in the quarterly report is to share information about the how, who and why of attempts to use its platforms by malicious actors, particularly those affiliated with countries. The intended audience of the report is other social media platforms, governments and the general public.


In the 27-page report, Meta describes the way several misinformation operations around the world were structured and then how Meta caught and stopped them.

Meta described its removal of Russian-based networks that attempted to use “our reporting tools by repeatedly reporting people in Ukraine for fictitious violations of Facebook policy, in an attempt to silence them.” It also described actions it took to counter phishing and hacking by the Azeri Ministry of Information against civil society and journalists in Azerbaijan. Meta also claimed to have stopped “two cyber espionage operations from Iran” and “spam networks” in Central America and the Philippines.


Meta’s report especially focused on what it termed “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” (CIB), which it described as “coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation.” Meta found CIBs in operation in Russia, Central America and the Philippines, which created a variety of fake websites, fake accounts and fake narratives in order to push for certain political goals.

A particularly unnerving and interesting CIB network was busted in Brazil. This network was pro-deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, and posed as environmental organizations and scientists saying that deforestation was not such a bad thing. The network began by posting “"memes":https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/memes about social and political issues” but “abandoned this activity after a couple of months, having gained almost no engagement.” The network involved several dozen Instagram and Facebook pages, and the malicious memers behind it reportedly had links to the Brazilian military.

The majority of the misinformation campaigns Meta reports seem to have been ineffective — and the “original memes” produced by these groups seem to have largely been uninteresting, as was the case with the Brazilian network. But, again, these are only the networks that Meta caught. Meta’s direct and thorough description of steps it took to prevent interference by "adversaries" in the elections and societies of several countries solidifies the social media giant’s position as a player in international affairs.

The same week as the report dropped, news leaked that Meta may plan to create virtual coins for use in the Metaverse, leading many to meme about the so-called “Zuck Bucks.”


The source of “Zuck Bucks,” which is purportedly the nickname for the new tokens internally, is an anonymous leak from Facebook. The Zuck Bucks would, apparently, be used within the Metaverse for services, similar to how in-game currencies are used in video games.


Many took issue with the fact that Zuck Bucks will be centrally controlled by their namesake, Mark Zuckerberg.


Some saw the creation of Zuck Bucks as a bad sign for the future and a bad choice for the company. But together with Meta’s quarterly report, which shows it conducting defensive security operations against sovereign states, the purported plans for a new currency raise questions about what exactly Meta believes its mission in the world is.


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