Facebook recently countered the Australian government’s legislation requiring payment to the news industry by brazenly shutting down all Australian news content. At this Time, a foreign investigation has revealed that Facebook received money from China to publish a major foreign propaganda campaign denying the persecution of the Uighurs in Xinjiang on its platform.
The Press Gazette reported that Facebook received money from Beijing authorities to place articles that downplayed “ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang,” including China Daily and CGTN, which both paid hundreds of dollars to millions of China Daily and CGTN both pay hundreds of dollars to promote articles to millions of users.
China Daily, for example, was charged $400 by Facebook to promote an October article in which it accused the West of “lying” and spreading “disinformation,” and a video in which it claimed that reports of detention centers in Xinjiang were “In another video, the newspaper claims that reports of detention centers in Xinjiang are “completely wrong” and “a Western media ploy,” while another report states that “persecution in Xinjiang is a myth that the Western media refuse to give up.
According to the Facebook ad’s analytics site, the sponsored content focused on “young Nepalese” who border Xinjiang, and the articles showed clips of Western commentators discussing the plight of Uighurs and alleging that “politicians, think tanks and the media work together to create a narrative that maliciously inflames public opinion and infiltrates public public consciousness.”
Last month, as U.S. pressure on Uighur re-Education camps increased, the Chinese media increased its “distribution efforts” by paying Facebook on Jan. 26 to broadcast an article contradicting an Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) report that alleged the report found evidence of 380 re-education camps in Xinjiang to be “completely false.”
Another tweeted article claimed “Is there forced labor in Xinjiang? China Daily interviewed more than 50 workers in factories across Xinjiang and clicked to find out what we found,” while the film attempts to discredit the Newseum investigation, which found that the Communist Party tried to brainwash Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities into becoming “loyal comrades” in exchange for cheap labor. The film even slammed the BBC report and called the Reuters and Associated Press reports false.
CGTN also paid $200 to $299 last month to run a story claiming that “Western media distorts #Xinjiang boarding schools,” and CGTN paid less than $500 the same month to add a story titled “What’s the truth about boarding schools in Xinjiang? What a difference these schools are making for local students”.
Even though Facebook is blocked in China, state-run organizations such as CGTN, China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily and CCTV still use the social media outlet for propaganda purposes. These media outlets account for five of the top six most liked news pages on Facebook worldwide.
Although Facebook has removed the sponsored content from China Daily and CGTN due to rules against political leanings, the news has been on the air for days and is likely to have spread around the world.
In response, a Facebook spokesperson explained that “as part of our ongoing efforts to improve transparency in advertising, Facebook does not accept political ads that do not reveal the advertiser on the shelves” and that “we want to make people more aware of who is behind the news they see on Facebook “.
But Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Hate, said it was “disgusting” that Facebook was helping the Chinese Communist Party propaganda to make money and said “they claim not to notice that the most popular It’s absurd that they claim they don’t notice that five of the six most popular news pages are promoting division and whitewashing atrocities, and no one will believe them.
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