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China Social Networks

In World's Largest Disinformation Campaign Online, China Is Harassing Americans (cnn.com) 208

"The Chinese government has built up the world's largest known online disinformation operation," reports CNN, "and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses."

CNN reports that disinformation operation is even "at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found." The onslaught of attacks — often of a vile and deeply personal nature — is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show. The U.S. State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world's information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping... Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs.

They say it's all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia. Often, these victims don't know where to turn. Some have spoken to law enforcement, including the FBI — but little has been done. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they're outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day. Known as "Spamouflage" or "Dragonbridge," the network's hundreds of thousands of accounts spread across every major social media platform have not only harassed Americans who have criticized the Chinese Communist Party, but have also sought to discredit U.S. politicians, disparage American companies at odds with China's interests and hijack online conversations around the globe that could portray the CCP in a negative light.

Some numbers from the article:
  • Meta "announced in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to this group in the second quarter of 2023 alone."
  • YouTube owner Google "told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years."
  • X "has blocked hundreds of thousands of China 'state-backed' or "state-linked" accounts, according to company blogs."

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In World's Largest Disinformation Campaign Online, China Is Harassing Americans

Comments Filter:
  • The World (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 )

    The world is eventually going to have to deal with governments like China's that want to ruin the world. Enough with the evil already.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Governments like China's?

      Oh my sweet summer child.

      Let me introduce you to this thing called - "history". You only really need to look at the last 100 years for a good representative view.

      It's pretty definitive that all governments are shit and horrible to not only the populations of other countries, but their own.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Fortunately, they do not. They do believe in payback, but that is something the US with its "exceptionalism" has never understood and hence the US is really good at making enemies by accident.

      That said, the US with is corrupt politicians, its broken legal system an its uneducated and unsophisticated population is a really easy target for such a type of attack, and not only for China.

      To all that are going to mod me down: The truth hurts. But it is not going away because you try to punish the messenger.

    • governments like China's that want to ruin the world

      From your perspective, maybe. (I'm guessing you're American here.)

      From my perspective, and everybody else's? It's "meet the new hegemon, same as the old hegemon -- i.e. not me."

      Sucks to be American in times like these, I guess, but nothing's actually subtantially different for everybody else.

    • by Revek ( 133289 )
      They great firewall will be the one blocking china.
  • I'm sure the Chinese government believes the "Great Firewall" guarantees that any kind of information war will be an asymmetric one. But the Chinese government has a lot of interests outside mainland China. Those interests might be targeted in a variety of ways. And, of course, a full scale effort to undermine China's attempt at a Big Brother society is overdue, and much to be desired.

    • Come join the Mobile Infantry! Service guarantees citizenship. Would you like to know more?

      • One of my all-time favourite movies! I was a fan of the book when I was a kid. Then I grew up, and fell in love with the satirical take on it.

        • by hawk ( 1151 )

          Check out Harry Harrison's Bil, the Galactic Hero.

          'Calling it a "parody" of Starship Troopers would be an understatement. Somewhere between "caustic" and "bitter".

          hawk

    • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @05:54AM (#64015915)
      What makes you think Washington, the Pentagon, the CIA, & the NSA haven't already been engaged in interfering with foreign govts' political & economic systems for at least a century? And we're not talking about only using rude words, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      • I think they have, and I think they're responsible for a significant part of the current mess the world is in. China worries me because they are, in my opinion, best equipped to take full advantage of the mass tracking and surveillance systems we use, and they seem intent on creating a society Big Brother could only dream of.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by geekmux ( 1040042 )

          I think they have, and I think they're responsible for a significant part of the current mess the world is in. China worries me because they are, in my opinion, best equipped to take full advantage of the mass tracking and surveillance systems we use, and they seem intent on creating a society Big Brother could only dream of.

          Good luck pushing America down that road. Fortunately the Founding Fathers created the 2nd Amendment in order to ensure that does not happen, under the validated stance of lessons fucking learned. Besides, Big Brother is so damn drunk on Greed right now that it can hardly see straight when it comes to surveillance unless it happens to affect the 'wrong' political race.

          Do you realize the US Secret Service is responsible for investigating every threat against the US President to determine credibility and ri

      • What makes you think Washington, the Pentagon, the CIA, & the NSA haven't already been engaged in interfering with foreign govts' political & economic systems for at least a century? And we're not talking about only using rude words, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        By 'interfering' you mean becoming utterly reliant on them by manufacturing an obscene amount of dependence on foreign manufacturing, including the majority of what keeps our largest retail institutions (Wal-Mart/Target/etc.) running?

        We're talking about China here. You're referencing a 50-year old op. And when America isn't even strong enough to oust the North Korean leader, spare me any bragging. Only 'rude' word Biden is capable of remembering is dictator. And right now America's fentanyl problem is ir

      • by LazLong ( 757 )

        Don't care. Two wrongs don't make a right. And fuck the CCP.

    • We already fought the great information war, just with very different signs.

      Ponder this: You're living in a country where the media constantly lie to you. And you kinda know that. Ok, you might have believed it for a while, but again and again, you notice that there is quite the difference between what you're told and what you see in your everyday life. It just doesn't add up.

      And then there's outside news. "Secret" news. You get told that your government is pretty much shitting on you and that they're drivi

  • getting out-done once again
  • by He Who Has No Name ( 768306 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @02:17AM (#64015743)

    It can be done. We're just dithering too much. Kick the Beijing State, Russia, Iran, and North Korea off the global internet completely and watch things shift in a much better direction overnight.

    This isn't hard. We should have done this 15, maybe 20 years ago when it was obvious those fucked up places had decided to be bad faith actors and use our open societies against us in gray zone warfare. Fuck them. They can have fun in a cave until they figure out how to be civilized, or overthrow the people keeping them uncivilized.

    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      I don't disagree with this at all.

    • The problem with a global Internet is that it's global. China and Russia can connect to any point in the network and, because IPv6 prefixes are defined by the path, they then get a new prefix.

      And, of course, nothing stops the bad actors in those countries from using VPNs to further disguise themselves.

      There's really no way to kick China and Russia off the Internet. The Internet is designed to disempower individual providers. That's the very essence of it. If we wanted to be able to kick them off, we should have stuck with the CCITT protocols.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's a good thing that we can't kick countries off the internet. That would just create lots of fractured networks, where it's much harder to disseminate information across borders.

    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      You realize that disinformation campaigns are not ordinary Chinese citizens posting on Facebook right? I mean most of them don't even speak English. All they have to do is send a few people to other countries to run their bots. Hell, they can send a few to the US. What are you going to do? Cut America off the internet?

  • Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs.

    I can't say I lose any sleep over whether the NPCs calling me a "fag" online are Chinese, Russian, or just boring ol' Americans who enjoy making low-effort insults. Besides, I think the only reason China and Russia still believe homophobic slurs are an effective insult is because they assume America is still some backwoods homophobic cesspool where being LGBTQ+ is subject to all kinds of social ostracisms as is the case with their countries. Well, guess what? My partner and I were at Disney World a few w

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      America is still some backwoods homophobic cesspool where being LGBTQ+ is subject to all kinds of social ostracisms as is the case with their countries.

      And then you listen to some US evangelical hate preacher...

      • Regardless of the current political landscape, a majority of Americans do support gay marriage and also abortion rights. The far right politicians have made those platforms their main talking points to ensure the far right segment of society show up at the polls. About half of republican voters agree with their extreme wing while the other half vote because they aren't the Democrat candidate.
      • And then you listen to some US evangelical hate preacher...

        That kind of thing gets a lot of press when it happens because it gets rage clicks. It's like the same reason why the media can't stop reporting on PETA, even though the overwhelming majority of the population has no issue whatsoever with consuming meat. It makes the news because they truly are just nutty fringe groups.

        When Westboro Baptist Church goes on their latest homophobic rant and/or protest, they may make a big deal about it but the reality is that nobody cares. [tenor.com]

  • And China and the Pacific Rim. Now they are crying. *Giggles*

  • Except for, well, the ones initiated by the USA, of course. The CIA is surely the world leader in that respect, as well as the other agencies.

  • by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @05:11AM (#64015867) Homepage
    I'm gonna be honest. I am going to need to see specifics. Just telling me "trust me bro" Is not convincing anymore.
    • Except this is like saying "trust me, water is actually wet". I'm happy to take this on face value. Heck I always assumed it was true before this story. If I wanted to be convinced of something it would be that China *wasn't* running the world's largest disinformation campaign.

  • The target is not the US government but those sad people that think X, Facebook and YouTube channels are "The Internet".
    Regretfully too many people see the (anti)social media as a valid source of information thereby enabling this crap from China, Trump etc.
  • by InterGuru ( 50986 ) <jhd@NoSpAM.interguru.com> on Sunday November 19, 2023 @08:53AM (#64016039)
    I never had and still do not have an active presence on any social media. This revelation gives me even more reason to stay away.
    • I also differentiate between Slashdot and sites like Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc. But I think technically we're still participating in (slightly less toxic) social media.

      • I think the difference is using pseudonyms, Slashdot being a so much smaller audience, and the conversation follows the centralized submission stream not individual voices. The result is a lot closer to the old internet. More decentralized (or smaller), more moderated, more anonymous.

    • I never had and still do not have an active presence on any social media. This revelation gives me even more reason to stay away.

      That does not make you immune in any way. Your public discourse with others is moderated by what *they* saw on social media. The news you read and see on TV is moderated by what the cable companies see posted on social media (hell half their stories have links to Twitter).

      You literally cannot avoid its influence on your life without going full hermit.

  • It seems like this would be a good use for AI blocking accounts. If they are being created programmatically, then there is a signature that can be found.

  • I thought CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC were the worlds largest online diss-information campaign. Live and learn i guess.
  • They can't notice Russia's campaign because we do most of the work for them. They only need to poke a little here or there to keep their initial investment paying off huge dividends. Some have even blamed Russian disinformation to try to get a certain laptop ignored...

  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @11:46AM (#64016285) Journal

    Meta "announced in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to this group in the second quarter of 2023 alone."
    YouTube owner Google "told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years."
    X "has blocked hundreds of thousands of China 'state-backed' or "state-linked" accounts, according to company blogs."

    Sounds like another reason to be glad I never made a Xwitter or Facebook account.

    I have a Youtube account but if some clown harasses me there I'd just block or ignore them.

    • You not having an account doesn't matter. You're still being influenced by it. You have conversations with people who have social media accounts, you read news that parrots what is posted on social media accounts. Your daily discourse is moderated by what is on social media whether you actively participate or not.

      • Your daily discourse is moderated by what is on social media whether you actively participate or not.

        No, not really, although there's always some leakage.

        Too many people think that their experience is the same or similar to what everyone else is experiencing.....it's not.

        There are plenty of people who exist in a very different space than what you assume is normal or typical.

  • Russia, with far less resources, was found to have successfully influenced the 2016 election and Brexit. I can almost see them in China... "Wow, it can't be that easy"
  • by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Sunday November 19, 2023 @12:59PM (#64016387)

    Kirk: You've managed to kill just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman you keep missing the target.

    While there may be an effort on the mentioned platforms, it's a false flag. The real culprit is TIktok and it has nothing whatsoever to so with privacy and data security. The platform is a massive influencing tool controlled by the CCP and westerners are falling for it.

  • Ban them from open society.
  • Do we have any measurement to show this Chinese disinformation campaign is the largest? Larger than any Russian campaign? Or American?

Don't panic.

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