Meta's adversarial threat reports explained

What the reports are

Meta published a report titled Meta's Adversarial Threat Report on 1 December 2021, and quarterly reports from 2022 ⁵. Its newsroom archive lists quarterly reports for the first, second and third quarters of 2022, the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023 ⁵. Later reports are published on Meta's Transparency Center, including the Q4 2024 report dated February 2025, the Q1 2025 report dated May 2025 and a combined Q2/Q3 2025 report dated December 2025 ^1,23.

The reports use Meta's own policy terms. Meta views CIB as coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal in which fake accounts are central to the operation ¹. Its 2021 report said removal covers the inauthentic assets and the authentic ones directly involved, followed by public reporting and sharing with researchers and industry peers ⁷.

How a network entry is laid out

• Origin: the country where Meta found the network originated, for example Benin, Ghana or China in the Q4 2024 report ¹.
• Targets: the audiences it aimed at, for example France with a smaller focus on the US for the Benin network ¹.
• Assets removed: counts of Facebook accounts, Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts ¹.
• Reach: approximate numbers of accounts that followed the Pages or Instagram accounts, or joined the Groups ¹.
• Ad spend: where relevant, for example about US$177,000 for a Romania network in Q1 2025 ².
• Attribution and links: where Meta has evidence, for example links to earlier networks or to named organisations ^2,3.

Networks in recent reports

Totals Meta has published

The running totals below come from two year-end posts. On 15 December 2022 it said it had taken down and reported on more than 200 covert influence operations since 2017, from 68 countries ⁴. It named Russia (34 networks), Iran (29) and Mexico (13) as the most prolific sources. It reported the United States as targeted by 34 operations, Ukraine by 20 and the United Kingdom by 16 ⁴.

On 3 December 2024 Meta said its teams had taken down around 20 new covert influence operations that year. It reported 39 Russia networks since 2017, followed by Iran with 31 and China with 11 ⁶. These totals come from different dates and should be read with the date of each post.

Other threats in the same reports

The reports cover more than CIB. The Q1 2023 report described three cyber espionage operations. It linked two to the hacking groups Bahamut APT and Patchwork APT and one to a state-linked group in Pakistan ⁸. The Q2/Q3 2025 report described a criminal scam syndicate operating mainly from Cambodia that impersonated law enforcement and government officials in several countries. Meta said it removed over 6,400 Facebook accounts and Pages tied to it from January to October 2025 ³.