Meta report highlights rise of home-grown online deception campaigns

According to new data from Meta, last year, a rising share of the online deception campaigns taken down by the company were home-grown.

According to new data from Facebook parent company Meta, last year, a rising share of the online deception campaigns taken down by the company were home-grown. It's a trend, the company said, caused in part by the entry of more amateurs into the space which was once dominated by government-linked groups.

The data came from a report published Thursday by Meta on "coordinated inauthentic behavior," a term it defined as "coordinated efforts to manipulate or corrupt public debate for a strategic goal, while relying centrally on fake accounts to mislead people about who's behind them."

Meta said in its report that in 2021 it took down 52 networks engaged in the practice, operating out of 34 different countries. More networks -- 11 of them -- were detected in Mexico than in any other country.

Of the 52 campaigns disrupted worldwide, Facebook said 64% had domestic targets, 15% targeted a mix of audiences both at home and abroad and 21% had foreign targets.