Meta shut down close to 9,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, groups and pages associated with a Chinese political spam network that had targeted users in Australia and other parts of the world, the company has revealed.

Meta began investigating in 2019 and its research aligned with several research groups who coined the term Spamouflage, including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi).

Facebook parent company Meta (META.O) said on Tuesday it had uncovered links between people associated with Chinese law enforcement and a long-running but largely ineffectual operation to positively influence people on social media about China.

The social media giant removed around 7,700 Facebook accounts and hundreds of other pages, groups and Instagram accounts connected to the so-called "Spamouflage" campaign, elements of which have been active since 2018, it said in a quarterly security report.

Meta said it closed thousands of China-linked accounts on its platforms that were participating in the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.”

The digital influence campaign spread across more than 50 online platforms, including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Google’s YouTube, X, TikTok and Reddit, according to Meta’s Adversarial Threat Report for 2023’s second quarter.

Meta said it linked the influence operation to “individuals associated with Chinese law enforcement.”