China's President Xi Jinping is shown on a screen through digitally decorated glass during the World Internet Conference (WIC) in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, November 23, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 8 (Reuters) - A misinformation campaign on social media in support of Chinese government interests has expanded to new languages and platforms, and it even tried to get people to show up to protests in the United States, researchers said on Wednesday.
Experts at security company FireEye (FEYE.O) and Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google said the operation was identified in 2019 as running hundreds of accounts in English and Chinese aimed at discrediting the Hong Kong democracy movement. The effort has broadened its mission and spread from Twitter (TWTR.N), Facebook(FB.O) and Google to thousands of handles on dozens of sites around the world.
This expansion suggests Chinese interests have made a deeper commitment to the sort of international propaganda techniques Russia has used for several years, experts said.
Some of the new accounts are on networks used predominantly in countries that have not previously been significant Chinese propaganda targets, such as Argentina. Other networks have users around the world but with a large proportion in Russia or Germany.
False information about COVID-19 has been a major focus. For example, accounts on social networking sites vKontakte, LiveJournal and elsewhere in Russian, German, Spanish and other languages have asserted that the novel coronavirus emerged in the United States before China and that it was developed by the U.S. military.
Multiple Russian-language LiveJournal accounts used identical wording: "U.S. Ft. Detrick was the source of COVID-19," referring to the U.S. Army's Fort Detrick installation in Maryland.
In addition to promoting false information on the virus, researchers said priorities for the group include criticizing fugitive Chinese propagandist Guo Wengui and his ally, former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and exploiting concerns about anti-Asian racism.
“We have observed extensive promotion of Russian, German, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese-language content on U.S. and non-U.S.-based platforms, in addition to the typical English and Chinese-language activity that has been widely reported on,” FireEye said in a report published Wednesday. Many of the accounts link to each other or use the same photos, helping the researchers see connections among them.
Many of the posts echo claims in state-controlled Chinese media, and they are consistent with other government propaganda efforts. The researchers do not have proof of involvement by a specific arm or ally of Beijing. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
So far, the accounts on the main U.S. platforms and major networks elsewhere such as Russia-based vKontakte have gained little interaction with authentic users, the researchers said.
"A lot of it is tweeting into the void," said John Hultquist, vice president of intelligence analysis at FireEye.
Some of the posts urged protesters to demonstrate against racism in the United States. In addition, they called on protesters to rally in April outside what the accounts said was the New York home of wealthy expatriate Guo, but there was little evidence that people showed up.
The coordinated fake accounts took that in stride, instead distributing doctored photos of a different protest in a different place.
"It's almost like they are being paid by volume," instead of engagement, said Shane Huntley, director of the threat analysis group at Google.
Alphabet's YouTube has been removing about a thousand channels a month tied to the campaign, though most promote Chinese entertainment more than political views or misinformation.
The production quality is improving, with higher-resolution video and better subtitles, suggesting an investment for the long haul.
Though the accounts have not been successful at blending in and attracting native followers, Hultquist said he was concerned that the dedication of resources would lead to improved technique and more convincing misinformation spreading.
“They've clearly got a wide mandate that's global. Someone is giving them pretty broad orders,” Hultquist said.
Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
AriChow on September 9th, 2021 at 17:48 UTC »
The US can dispel this notion by helping other countries have access to the vaccines. Remove the patent from private companies so that the whole world can get vaccinated, spread the supply since we preordered more vaccines than necessary. And it wouldn't hurt for a certain political party to stop downplaying the virus while simultaneously dismissing masks and vaccines.
Erisagi on September 9th, 2021 at 17:09 UTC »
There is another article from the Hill that is being discussed in other news subs. That one also reported that these campaigns aimed to get people to go to protests but appeared to further specify covid-related protests.
I've said that if the CCP only tried to focus on blaming other countries for the virus, they will get nowhere. But if they tried assisting, amplifying, and exacerbating resistance and protests to lockdowns, masks and vaccines, that may have more potential. If they really wanted to somehow link the United States to the origin of the virus, they could exploit and amplify the allegations connecting Dr. Fauci, the NIH, and the Wuhan lab. Both of these already have followings the CCP could exploit to harm public trust and contribute to destabilizing factors.
San_Sevieria on September 9th, 2021 at 10:52 UTC »
Submission Statement
Summary
Experts at both FireEye and Google have said that pro-China misinformation campaigns on social media have significantly expanded recently, suggesting "a deeper commitment to the sort of international propaganda techniques Russia has used for several years". The campaign has expanded to include more languages and more social media platforms, posting content in Russian, German, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese, in addition to English and Chinese.
COVID-19 disinformation is a major focus of the campaign, with accounts asserting that the virus emerged in the US before China, and that it was developed by the US military.
The researchers do not have proof of involvement by a specific arm or ally of Beijing.
"It's almost like they are being paid by volume", said a Google executive. "A lot of it is tweeting into the void", said a FireEye executive, adding separately that "They've clearly got a wide mandate that's global. Someone is giving them pretty broad orders". Even though the accounts are not generally considered successful, there are concerns that the improving production qualities, indicative of long-haul investment, might lead to improved techniques and more convincing misinformation.
Opinion
Continuing my series of posts regarding Chinese disinformation that I started at the beginning of the pandemic, it seems my initial observation that China sees blame for the Wuhan Virus as being a potentially existential threat, therefore worthy of taking extreme measures against, is holding.
Though this article is about the obvious accounts, one must keep in mind that these most likely account for a small proportion of the accounts 'in play', and are probably the CCP's in-house assets--it's sensible to hire external expertise to manage the immediate threat while the in-house assets are built up for the longer war. Some accounts might highlight the lack of proof of a link between Beijing and the accounts under investigation, but such proofs become impossible to find with some simple mitigations (such is the nature of the internet). Given the importance of public opinion in democratic countries (defensively and offensively), as well as the increasing geopolitical tensions between China and the West, this is a literal war preparation to them, with all the will and resources to match.
The key takeaway from this article is not what is currently happening, but what will very likely happen, and how social media platforms and governments worldwide should manage the threat of being infiltrated, then inundated with biological and mechanical shills. As mentioned in an earlier post machine learning algorithms, like GPT-3, in combination with other bots, are major threats to online discussion, and it goes without saying that platforms like Reddit and Facebook are incentivized to play down or ignore this elephant in the room--and they have the skills, resources, and opportunities to do so.
How countries eventually deal with the threat is of particular interest--given enough sustained firepower, and absent of breakthrough technologies that might turn the tide, China might eventually be proven prescient with their idea of cyber sovereignty, since other countries might be forced to follow suit.