KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 6 ― Bukit Aman rejects reports that linked Malaysian police to fake social media accounts as asserted by Meta, the parent company behind Facebook and Instagram.
Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) secretary Datuk Noorsiah Mohd Saaduddin said it views the allegations seriously.
“RMP denies the allegation and is gathering further information about it,” she added in the two-paragraph statement issued late last night.
In its Quarterly Adversarial Threat report released yesterday, Meta said it had identified and removed over 600 accounts across all its social network platforms for violating the policy against “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, with most of them alleged to be part of a “troll farm” to corrupt or manipulate public discourse using fake accounts.
Meta claimed the network of fake accounts posted memes in the Malay language in support of the current government coalition and attempting to paint its critics as corrupt, in addition to promoting police.
To date, it said it has removed 596 Facebook accounts, 180 pages, 11 groups and 72 Instagram accounts. Meta said its investigation found that these accounts were linked to the Malaysian police force.
“We found this network after reviewing information about a small portion of this activity initially suspected to have originated in China by researchers at Clemson University. Although the people behind it attempted to conceal their identity and coordination, our investigation found links to the Royal Malaysia Police,” Meta said in its report.
