Content created as part of a campaign to promote US foreign policy has been removed from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter. This is the first time such a pro-American campaign has been recorded.

The bots have been active for the past five years, posting pro-US content on eight social media and messaging platforms, promoting US positions, opinions and goals. At the same time, these accounts systematically criticized Russia, China, Iran and other countries.

The bot accounts were “disguised” as news websites or posed as non-existent people to post content in seven languages, including Russian, Arabic and Pakistani Urdu. Reports blame Russia for “imperialist wars” in Syria and Africa, and praise US economic aid to Central Asia and Iraq.

The bots have been active over the past five years on eight social media and messaging platforms promoting US positions, opinions and goals.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said the accounts were created in the US, while Twitter said some of the accounts were created in the UK. “We are seeing this for the first time. “We’ve never seen a pro-American powerhouse sanctioned by Twitter and Meta,” says René Diresta of Stanford University’s Internet Observatory.

Ms. Diresta notes that the fake account tactic is reminiscent of China’s influence strategy, which focuses on presenting an idealized image of the country. Russian agencies are pursuing a different tactic, seeking to sow discord in the societies of their opponents. The pro-American campaign, for its part, aimed to show how amazing life is in the US compared to other countries.

Stanford researchers found that automated account managers preferred to use memes and fake news to complain about Russia or China. Accounts posted news about food shortages in Central Asian countries due to the Russian invasion, while others praised pro-Ukrainian protests in those countries.

The Stanford researchers noted that more than 30 accounts were targeted at the Iranian public, many of them created and managed by artificial intelligence. None of the campaigns received significant response, with few retweets or shares of their content.