Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Issues WhatsApp Election Warning

Meta recently announced the discovery of a small cluster of malicious WhatsApp accounts linked to Iran, saying it blocked suspicious accounts posing as tech support and targeting political figures.

The WhatsApp security announcement comes in the wake of an August 19 joint statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Iranian efforts to influence November’s election.

Meta’s investigation of the WhatsApp accounts linked the activity to APT42, an Iranian threat actor known for its phishing campaigns. Meta said the attack “attempted to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States and the U.K.” It added that no evidence of compromised accounts was found, but the company has taken precautionary measures.

“Out of an abundance of caution and given the heightened threat environment ahead of the U.S. election, we also shared information about this malicious activity with law enforcement and with the presidential campaigns to encourage them to stay cautious against potential adversarial targeting,” Meta said in a statement on August 23.

Adversarial targeting, in the context of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, refers to deliberate efforts to manipulate or influence specific groups of voters through targeted messaging or disinformation campaigns.

The “adversarial” part comes from the fact that these tactics often involve using technology to exploit vulnerabilities or concerns of voter groups, sometimes in ways that may be misleading or divisive. For example, a campaign might use social media algorithms to show different, potentially contradictory messages to different voter groups based on their perceived interests or fears.

Newsweek has contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency via email for comment.

Days after Meta’s announcement, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee addressing past content moderation practices.

The Meta CEO said that in 2021, senior officials from President Joe Biden’s administration pressured the company to censor posts about COVID-19, including those that were humor or satire. Separately, the FBI warned the company about potential Russian disinformation about the Biden family and Burisma, Zuckerberg said, and Meta later demoted reporting of corruption allegations surrounding the family in the weeks before the 2020 election.

Zuckerberg expressed regret over the company’s actions, saying, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”

“I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction—and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” he added.

On X, formerly Twitter, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee hailed Zuckerberg’s statement as a “big win for free speech” while sharing his letter in full.

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Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:

1. Biden-Harris Admin “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.

2. Facebook censored Americans.

3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Big win for free speech. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024

In their joint statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Iran has “demonstrated a longstanding interest in exploiting societal tensions through various means, including through the use of cyber operations to attempt to gain access to sensitive information related to U.S. elections.”

After the agencies confirmed the claim made by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign of an email hack earlier this month, the statement went on to say that they had “observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting Presidential campaigns.”