Pro-China Misinformation Social Media Campaign Expanding To New Countries

On Wednesday, researchers said that a misinformation campaign in support of the Chinese government interests on social media has expanded to new platforms and languages. As a matter of fact, it even went as far as getting people to show up for protests in the United States. Experts at Alphabet’s Google and security firm FireEye said that the operation had been identified back in 2019, which was running hundreds of accounts in Chinese and English aimed at discrediting the democracy movement in Hong Kong. The mission of this campaign has broadened, as it spread from Google, Facebook and Twitter to thousands of handles on various sites around the world.

This expansion is an indicator that a deeper commitment has been made by Chinese interests to the kind of international propaganda techniques that has been used by Russia for numerous years. A number of new accounts are on networks that are used in countries, which were not significant targets of Chinese propaganda previously, such as Argentina. Some of the other networks have global users, but a major proportion is in Germany or Russia. The primary focus has been false information about COVID-19.

For instance, accounts on social networking platforms like LiveJournal and vKontakte and others in German, Russia, Spanish and other languages have posted that the novel coronavirus emerged in the United States before China and the US ministry developed it. Identical wording was used by multiple LiveJournal accounts in Russian to promote the same message. Researchers said that not only were they promoting false information regarding the coronavirus, but the groups’ priorities also include exploiting concerns regarding anti-Asian racism and criticism of fugitive Guo Wengui and his ally Steve Bannon, the former strategist for Donald Trump.

Most of these accounts are linked to each other, or they use the same photos, which is helpful for the researchers because they can easily see connections amongst them. In additions, a number of posts also echo the claims made in the Chinese media and they are also in line with other government propaganda efforts. However, the researchers lack proof of any involvement by an ally of Beijing. The researchers did say that the accounts on major networks in other countries like Russia-centric vKontakte and main US platforms have gotten very little interaction from authentic users. A Fire-Eye specialist said that most of the propaganda is tweeting into the void.

There were some posts that urged protestors to do a demonstration against racism in the US. Furthermore, they also called on the protestors in April to rally outside the New York home of Guo, but there wasn’t much evidence of people showing up. The fake accounts didn’t slow down after that, as they distribute doctored photos of another protest taking place somewhere else. YouTube has been removing almost thousands channels per month that are connected to the campaign, even though most are promoting Chinese entertainment, rather than political misinformation. There is improvement in the production quality, as videos have higher-resolution and better quality, hinting that the investment is for the long haul.