For at least the past seven years, Russia has been waging a sophisticated disinformation campaign online.

One of the tactics they’ve used to stoke hatred among Western allies and keep tensions high includes posing as legitimate European news outlets on social media.

But Facebook has taken them down in its newest efforts against the spread of false information.

Facebook announced this week that they had disrupted Russian efforts to push a pro-Kremlin message on social media through the use of those #fakenews outlets.

At the same time, Facebook targeted disinformation campaigns in China aimed at disrupting the midterm elections in the US and being critical of the Czech government.

Although the takedown was simultaneous, they were not connected.

Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, Ben Nimmo, explained, “They overreached themselves. If you pretend to be Spiegel in Germany in front of an audience where Spiegel is one of the best-known brands in the country, then what you’re doing is increasing the risk that somebody is going to look at you and say, ‘Wait a minute, this is not the real thing.'”