How a fake network pushes pro-China propaganda

[aziqbal]

How a fake network pushes pro-China propaganda
By Flora Carmichael
BBC News

Published5 August
Share

A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles is pushing pro-China narratives and attempting to discredit those seen as opponents of China's government, according to a new study.
The aim is to delegitimise the West and boost China's influence and image overseas, the report by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) suggests.
The study, shared with the BBC, found that the network of fake profiles circulated garish cartoons depicting, among others, exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui, an outspoken critic of China.
Other controversial figures featured in the cartoons included "whistleblower" scientist Li-Meng Yan, and Steve Bannon, former political strategist for Donald Trump.
Each of these individuals has themselves been accused of spreading disinformation, including false information about Covid-19.

Image caption,
The cartoons shared seek to ridicule (left-right) Bannon, Li-Meng Yan and Guo Wengui
Some of the accounts - spread across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube - use fake AI-generated profile pictures, while others appear to have been hijacked after previously posting in other languages.
There is no concrete evidence that the network is linked to the Chinese government, but according to the CIR, a non-profit group which works to counter disinformation, it resembles pro-China networks previously taken down by Twitter and Facebook.
These networks amplified pro-China narratives similar to those promoted by Chinese state representatives and state media.
Much of the content shared by the network focuses on the US, and in particular on divisive issues like gun laws and race politics.
One of the narratives pushed by the network paints the US as having a poor human rights record. Posts from the fake accounts cite the murder of George Floyd among examples, as well as discrimination against Asians.

Image caption,
This account has since been suspended by Twitter for violating its rules
Some accounts repeatedly deny human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, where experts say China has detained at least a million Muslims against their will, calling the allegations "lies fabricated by the United States and the West".
"The aim of the network appears to be to delegitimise the West by amplifying pro-Chinese narratives," said Benjamin Strick, the author of the CIR report.
There are strong similarities between this network and the so-called "Spamouflage Dragon" propaganda network identified by social analytics firm Graphika.
Commenting on the new study Ira Hubert, a senior investigative analyst at Graphika, said: "The report shows that on US platforms, there was no 'honeymoon' in the first months of the Biden administration.
"The network put out a steady mix of anti-US content, for example cheering US 'defeat' ahead of its withdrawal from Afghanistan and painting the US as a poor ally whose aid to India was inadequate during some of its worst months battling Covid."
How was the network uncovered?
The CIR mapped hashtags favoured by previously identified networks, unearthing more accounts that showed signs of being part of an influence operation.
Tell-tale signs included high levels of activity pushing propaganda narratives and repeated use of the same hashtags. Newly created accounts, accounts with usernames that appeared to be randomly generated, and accounts with very few followers also raised red flags.

• The foreigners in China's disinformation drive
• Inside the pro-China network targeting the US, Hong Kong and an exiled tycoon
• Going undercover to infiltrate Chinese-American far-right networks

Some profiles were created to post original content, while others only shared, liked and commented on those original posts, to help them reach a wider audience.
This kind of activity is often referred to as "astroturfing" because it is designed to create the appearance of a grass-roots campaign.

IMAGE SOURCE, BENJAMIN STRICK / CIR
Image caption,
The study visualises how different accounts amplify each other - each small node represents a Twitter account
Fake people
Many of the fake profiles used AI generated photos - a relatively new phenomenon that allows computers to create realistic looking images of people who don't exist. Unlike stolen profile images of real people, the AI generated images, which are created by a type of machine learning framework called StyleGAN, cannot be traced using a reverse image search.
The use of fake profile pictures in disinformation campaigns is becoming more common as users and platforms become more wary of suspicious accounts.
The CIR used various techniques to identify fake profile pictures in the network. The synthetic images always put the eyes in the same location, so lining them all up can help identify a collection of fake profile pictures.
Normally, a random collection of profile pictures would display much more variety in the cropping and the alignment of the eyes.

IMAGE SOURCE, BENJAMIN STRICK / CIR
Image caption,
The network uses images of people who do not exist
Other signs include blurred edges around the hair, teeth at strange angles, and blurred objects around the face.
Many of the Facebook accounts believed to be part of the network appeared to have Turkish names. These accounts may once have belonged to real people but were later hijacked or sold and given new profile pictures.
Hijacked accounts also spread the network's pro-China narratives on YouTube. Accounts that had previously posted in English or German and then lain dormant for years suddenly started posting Chinese language content from official Chinese state broadcasters.

IMAGE SOURCE, BENJAMIN STRICK / CIR
Image caption,
The report found spam Tweets using the same text, tags and images all uploaded on the same day
The CIR shared its research with the social media platforms involved.
Facebook has removed the accounts on its platform highlighted in the study.
A Facebook spokesman said: "In September 2019, we removed a network of spam activity that posted lifestyle and political clickbait, primarily in Chinese. This network had almost no engagement on our platform, and we continue to work with researchers and our industry peers to detect and block their attempts to come back, like those accounts mentioned in this report."
YouTube also terminated accounts in the network for violating YouTube's community guidelines.
Twitter said it had also now removed almost all of the accounts identified by CIR, as well as a number of others engaged in similar behaviour. It said its investigations are still ongoing.
"When we identify information operation campaigns that we can reliably attribute to state-linked activity - either domestic or foreign-led - we disclose them to our public archive."

Analysis - Kerry Allen, BBC Monitoring China media analyst
Over the past decade, billions of dollars have gone into funding the growth of China's presence on international platforms.
But with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube blocked in the mainland, and only accessible via a VPN, the country has struggled to get such platforms recognised as viable competitors to Western juggernauts. It has needed not only Chinese voices, but foreign voices, to show that the country has "arrived".
"Wolf warrior diplomacy" has emerged, with officials using Twitter accounts to fly the flag for Communist Party rhetoric. China wants to portray itself as a friend to the world - and not a repressive, authoritarian state, as it perceives Western nations make it out to be.
With more than one billion internet users, China certainly has the capability to orchestrate large-scale social media campaigns, and target what it sees as anti-China voices with a wealth of opposing opinions.
But with English-language skills limited in China, there are often clumsy tell-tale signs that a Chinese troll is behind such accounts. Many rely on automatic translation software to turn Chinese messages into English, meaning such messages are riddled with typos, or contain clumsy grammatical structures.
And with many Western outlets inaccessible to them within China, users generally have very little knowledge of who they are meant to be targeting, so they simply piggyback off the replies of others from within the same network.
Graphics by Simon Martin
Related Topics

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-58062630

 

[Han-Tang]

BBC？ LOL

 

[Rollno21]

You are on the wrong form posting it my friend,everyone knows all these Chinese posters are bots and post propaganda here ,it's actually encouraged here.you show them truth ,still it will be called fake and called western propaganda here.

 

[beijingwalker]

BBC？ LOL

BBC reporter street interview in Beijing about the pandemic, ridiculed and mocked by the Beijing locals

"This is China, our country is always full of vitality, unlike your incompetent government, just leave people infected and die". The BBC reporter tried to laugh away this embarrassment and awkward moments in the interview.

This is the same BBC reporter who was in Xinjiang and made up Xinjiang concentration camp lies which later were debunked by a revisit by Chinese reporters.

You are on the wrong form posting it my friend,everyone knows all these Chinese posters are bots and post propaganda here ,it's actually encouraged here.you show them truth ,still it will be called fake and called western propaganda here.

LOl, but when BBC did an interview in Beijing streets, they found everyone is a CCP bot, 20 million of them. Indian mind shining again here.


Western reporter reporting Zhengzhou flood was mobbed by the city locals accusing him reporting lies.
Two girls tried to stop the crowd from grabbing the reporter and pleaded the crowd to calm down, one girl explained to the reporter that BBC's previous reporting claiming that the passengers were throw onto the platforms in Zhengzhou subway and let die. This report enraged Zhengzhou residents.

In the end a local guys said you never want to report China , all you want to do is attacking China, and he walked away after making his last shout.
"Don't interview me, I hate you"

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

You are on the wrong form posting it my friend,everyone knows all these Chinese posters are bots and post propaganda here ,it's actually encouraged here.you show them truth ,still it will be called fake and called western propaganda here.

if there were troll farms we'd outsource it to India, since 50 cents per day would make Indians rich and Indians are great at high volume low quality software work. Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai.

 

[beijingwalker]

 

[faithfulguy]

You are on the wrong form posting it my friend,everyone knows all these Chinese posters are bots and post propaganda here ,it's actually encouraged here.you show them truth ,still it will be called fake and called western propaganda here.

Daniel Dumbrill, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate and Ben Norton are excellent western sources on China and the Uighur situation. These guys are real people, not bots.

 

[Rollno21]

if there were troll farms we'd outsource it to India, since 50 cents per day would make Indians rich and Indians are great at high volume low quality software work. Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai.

Ok bot,here comes 11 ping

 

[beijingwalker]

if there were troll farms we'd outsource it to India, since 50 cents per day would make Indians rich and Indians are great at high volume low quality software work. Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai.

Indian bots army do it for free

India using cyber-volunteers to silence critical voices, Indian digital warriors
Government invites citizen volunteers to flag ‘unlawful’, ‘anti-national’ content as activists fear the creation of a surveillance state.
Activists say it has become harder to distinguish between online trolls, the BJP IT cell and the cyber-volunteers

29 Nov 2021
The group that ran the Hindutva Watch handle on Twitter – which flagged instances of violence and bigotry from Hindu nationalist groups – had long been accustomed to being abused and trolled for content critical of the Indian government.

But even they were stunned when the account, with nearly 26,000 followers, was abruptly suspended in April this year with no reason given.

The suspension of that, and dozens of accounts deemed to be critical of the government, came shortly after the launch of a cybercrime volunteers programme by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to report illegal or unlawful online content, Reuters news agency reported on Monday.

Citizen volunteers, or “good Samaritans”, are required to maintain “strict confidentiality”, and report child sex abuse material, as well as online content “disturbing public order” or religious harmony, and against India’s integrity, the MHA said, according to the report.

For activists, journalists and others critical of the government, it has become harder to distinguish between trolls, the governing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) information technology cell and the cyber-volunteers – estimated to number in the hundreds.

“For us, Twitter was important to expose communalism, hate speech, fake news and pseudoscience spread by right-wing forces,” said a spokesperson for Hindutva Watch who asked not to be named for safety reasons.

“For this, we have been trolled, abused, threatened. The online vigilante machinery stalks accounts that are critical of the BJP or the RSS, labels them as anti-national, and lobbies to get them suspended,” the spokesperson said.

RSS refers to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the far-right ideological mentor of the BJP.

Complaints about posts are assessed under Twitter’s terms of service and Twitter rules, and “any content that is determined to be in violation is actioned in line with our range of enforcement options”, a spokesperson for Twitter said.

The MHA did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment.

Digital warriors
The BJP swept into power in India in 2014 and won by an even bigger margin in 2019, its victories credited to a large extent to its savvy IT cell and social media prowess, fuelled by thousands of supporters it calls digital “yodhas” or warriors.

Modi, 71, is known to be tech-savvy, with 73 million followers on his personal Twitter account, and follows several individuals who are known to harass those critical of his government, and who often say in their profile that they are “proud to be followed by Modi”.

“The cyber-volunteers programme goes beyond just silencing people,” said Swati Chaturvedi, an independent journalist who has written a book on the BJP’s social media strategy and her experience of being trolled.

“But it is actually a very smart move, as they can carry on browbeating dissent online without coming under more scrutiny themselves,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

More than half of India’s 1.3 billion population has access to the internet. The country has more than 300 million Facebook users and 200 million on Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service – more than any other democracy in the world.

About 22 million Indians use Twitter, according to Statista.

India, like other countries, has recently introduced laws to limit so-called misinformation and to censor content that is deemed to be critical of the government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic.

China launched a hotline this year for citizens to report online comments that defame the governing Communist Party, while Vietnam has introduced guidelines encouraging people to post positive content about the country, and prohibiting posts that “affect the interests of the state”.

India this year introduced new rules that activists say violate privacy rights by requiring social media firms to identify users to authorities, following government demands to remove posts critical of its handling of COVID-19.

But the government’s cyber-volunteers programme may be the most insidious of measures so far, and risks turning the country into a surveillance state, said Anushka Jain, an associate counsel at Internet Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group.

“We already have a cybercrime law – so there is no need for this. It’s just cyber-vigilantism, and it’s dangerous as it is pitting citizen against citizen with no way to ensure someone is not just using it for their personal vendetta,” Jain said.

“Anyone can become a volunteer with no prior verification, and there is no clear definition of what is anti-national content. This programme will just create a secret police like the Stasi in East Germany in present-day India,” she said.

‘Surveillance state’
Three years ago, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said it planned to establish a social media communication hub that would monitor online platforms and analyse all communications in real time.

The proposal was challenged by an opposition party member who said it would violate privacy and create a “surveillance state”. The plan was withdrawn by the government, which had argued the hub would help overburdened police prevent crime.

Since then, the government has increased pressure on social media firms: removal requests to Twitter have risen steadily since 2014, and India submitted the most requests to take down content in 2020, according to data from Twitter.

India also topped the list for information requests by governments to Twitter in the second half of 2020, overtaking the United States for the first time. These requests can include asking for the identities of people tweeting under pseudonyms.

Facebook received more than 45,000 requests for data from the Indian government from January to June this year, compared with about 3,000 requests for the same period in 2013, its data showed.

Several farmers – and their supporters – protesting against new agricultural laws earlier this year had their Twitter and Instagram accounts blocked at the request of the government, including the handle @standup4farmers.

Dozens of activists and journalists in India were also revealed to be targeted by the Pegasus spyware, developed by Israeli tech firm NSO, which turns a mobile phone into a surveillance device.

Authorities have declined to say whether the government bought the technology, only saying that “unauthorised surveillance does not occur”.

Meanwhile, authorities in several Indian states have recently said they will deny passports and government jobs to people for their “anti-national” or anti-social” online posts.

“The objective is silencing through intimidation, as well as creating a false narrative of support for the views of the government,” said Mirza Saaib Beg, a lawyer from Indian-administered Kashmir who has been trolled and harassed for his criticism of the government.

“There is no clear definition of what the unlawful activity is that can land a person in trouble. Similarly, there is no definition of what is anti-national – it seems that any criticism of the ruling party is anti-national,” said Beg.

‘Sinister censorship’
There are real-world consequences: a member of a right-wing Hindu group was arrested for the 2017 killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh, while WhatsApp group messages have led to lynchings of mostly Muslim and Dalit men falsely accused of killing cows, kidnapping children or selling body parts.

WhatsApp introduced limits on forwarding messages in 2018 to deter mass forwards in India.

For Hiral Rana, 37, these were not pressing concerns when she signed up to be a cybercrime volunteer to counter misinformation after seeing a tweet on the government programme.

About two to three times a day, she and other volunteers in the western Gujarat state were sent a piece of information related to the coronavirus or government policy to post on their Twitter accounts, and flag any misinformation that they spotted to the police and the state’s cybercrime group.

“It’s a good programme, but there were too few of us trying to spot misleading tweets and report them,” she said, adding that while she was a BJP supporter, she was not asked to post any political messages. She stepped down after a few months.

When the Hindutva Watch account was suspended on Twitter, more than a dozen accounts – with names that declared love for India or Modi – posted celebratory messages and warnings that they were going after similar accounts.

The account remains suspended.

“The IT cell has turned into a full-fledged spying and mass reporting machinery. The internet in India is now controlled by the government, which suspends or silences voices critical of the government,” the spokesperson said.

“It is a sinister form of censorship.”

India using cyber-volunteers to silence critical voices: Report

Government invites citizen volunteers to flag ‘anti-national’ content as activists fear creation of surveillance state.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[Rollno21]

Daniel Dumbrill, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate and Ben Norton are excellent western sources on China and the Uighur situation. These guys are real people, not bots.

Dude for example look at you ,you have Taiwan flag post for China, never seen you post for Taiwan. It's easy for everyone to see that you are a bot.

 

[beijingwalker]

Indian bots

Ok bot,here comes 11 ping

LOl, are you one of these free Indian bots army?

Since Narendra Modi came to power, the Bharatiya Janata Party is known for using exclusive troll disinformation to repress and monitor any opponents against his government.[10] Indian propaganda, both private and state-sponsored, has also attacked Jeremy Corbyn after he criticized Indian handling of Kashmir.[11] In 2019, a European News Watchdog discovered 265 bogus media outlets in 65 countries which are managed by an "Indian influence network".[12] The network of fake news websites were used to target policy makers in the United States and the European Union to act against Pakistan.[13] The aim of those websites is to spread propaganda and influence public perception on Pakistan.

 

[beijingwalker]

India,A Country of Trolls

 

[Beast]

How a fake network pushes pro-China propaganda
By Flora Carmichael
BBC News

Published5 August
Share

A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles is pushing pro-China narratives and attempting to discredit those seen as opponents of China's government, according to a new study.
The aim is to delegitimise the West and boost China's influence and image overseas, the report by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) suggests.
The study, shared with the BBC, found that the network of fake profiles circulated garish cartoons depicting, among others, exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui, an outspoken critic of China.
Other controversial figures featured in the cartoons included "whistleblower" scientist Li-Meng Yan, and Steve Bannon, former political strategist for Donald Trump.
Each of these individuals has themselves been accused of spreading disinformation, including false information about Covid-19.

Image caption,
The cartoons shared seek to ridicule (left-right) Bannon, Li-Meng Yan and Guo Wengui
Some of the accounts - spread across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube - use fake AI-generated profile pictures, while others appear to have been hijacked after previously posting in other languages.
There is no concrete evidence that the network is linked to the Chinese government, but according to the CIR, a non-profit group which works to counter disinformation, it resembles pro-China networks previously taken down by Twitter and Facebook.
These networks amplified pro-China narratives similar to those promoted by Chinese state representatives and state media.
Much of the content shared by the network focuses on the US, and in particular on divisive issues like gun laws and race politics.
One of the narratives pushed by the network paints the US as having a poor human rights record. Posts from the fake accounts cite the murder of George Floyd among examples, as well as discrimination against Asians.

Image caption,
This account has since been suspended by Twitter for violating its rules
Some accounts repeatedly deny human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, where experts say China has detained at least a million Muslims against their will, calling the allegations "lies fabricated by the United States and the West".
"The aim of the network appears to be to delegitimise the West by amplifying pro-Chinese narratives," said Benjamin Strick, the author of the CIR report.
There are strong similarities between this network and the so-called "Spamouflage Dragon" propaganda network identified by social analytics firm Graphika.
Commenting on the new study Ira Hubert, a senior investigative analyst at Graphika, said: "The report shows that on US platforms, there was no 'honeymoon' in the first months of the Biden administration.
"The network put out a steady mix of anti-US content, for example cheering US 'defeat' ahead of its withdrawal from Afghanistan and painting the US as a poor ally whose aid to India was inadequate during some of its worst months battling Covid."
How was the network uncovered?
The CIR mapped hashtags favoured by previously identified networks, unearthing more accounts that showed signs of being part of an influence operation.
Tell-tale signs included high levels of activity pushing propaganda narratives and repeated use of the same hashtags. Newly created accounts, accounts with usernames that appeared to be randomly generated, and accounts with very few followers also raised red flags.

• The foreigners in China's disinformation drive
• Inside the pro-China network targeting the US, Hong Kong and an exiled tycoon
• Going undercover to infiltrate Chinese-American far-right networks

Some profiles were created to post original content, while others only shared, liked and commented on those original posts, to help them reach a wider audience.
This kind of activity is often referred to as "astroturfing" because it is designed to create the appearance of a grass-roots campaign.

IMAGE SOURCE, BENJAMIN STRICK / CIR
Image caption,
The study visualises how different accounts amplify each other - each small node represents a Twitter account
Fake people
Many of the fake profiles used AI generated photos - a relatively new phenomenon that allows computers to create realistic looking images of people who don't exist. Unlike stolen profile images of real people, the AI generated images, which are created by a type of machine learning framework called StyleGAN, cannot be traced using a reverse image search.
The use of fake profile pictures in disinformation campaigns is becoming more common as users and platforms become more wary of suspicious accounts.
The CIR used various techniques to identify fake profile pictures in the network. The synthetic images always put the eyes in the same location, so lining them all up can help identify a collection of fake profile pictures.
Normally, a random collection of profile pictures would display much more variety in the cropping and the alignment of the eyes.

IMAGE SOURCE, BENJAMIN STRICK / CIR
Image caption,
The network uses images of people who do not exist
Other signs include blurred edges around the hair, teeth at strange angles, and blurred objects around the face.
Many of the Facebook accounts believed to be part of the network appeared to have Turkish names. These accounts may once have belonged to real people but were later hijacked or sold and given new profile pictures.
Hijacked accounts also spread the network's pro-China narratives on YouTube. Accounts that had previously posted in English or German and then lain dormant for years suddenly started posting Chinese language content from official Chinese state broadcasters.

IMAGE SOURCE, BENJAMIN STRICK / CIR
Image caption,
The report found spam Tweets using the same text, tags and images all uploaded on the same day
The CIR shared its research with the social media platforms involved.
Facebook has removed the accounts on its platform highlighted in the study.
A Facebook spokesman said: "In September 2019, we removed a network of spam activity that posted lifestyle and political clickbait, primarily in Chinese. This network had almost no engagement on our platform, and we continue to work with researchers and our industry peers to detect and block their attempts to come back, like those accounts mentioned in this report."
YouTube also terminated accounts in the network for violating YouTube's community guidelines.
Twitter said it had also now removed almost all of the accounts identified by CIR, as well as a number of others engaged in similar behaviour. It said its investigations are still ongoing.
"When we identify information operation campaigns that we can reliably attribute to state-linked activity - either domestic or foreign-led - we disclose them to our public archive."

Analysis - Kerry Allen, BBC Monitoring China media analyst
Over the past decade, billions of dollars have gone into funding the growth of China's presence on international platforms.
But with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube blocked in the mainland, and only accessible via a VPN, the country has struggled to get such platforms recognised as viable competitors to Western juggernauts. It has needed not only Chinese voices, but foreign voices, to show that the country has "arrived".
"Wolf warrior diplomacy" has emerged, with officials using Twitter accounts to fly the flag for Communist Party rhetoric. China wants to portray itself as a friend to the world - and not a repressive, authoritarian state, as it perceives Western nations make it out to be.
With more than one billion internet users, China certainly has the capability to orchestrate large-scale social media campaigns, and target what it sees as anti-China voices with a wealth of opposing opinions.
But with English-language skills limited in China, there are often clumsy tell-tale signs that a Chinese troll is behind such accounts. Many rely on automatic translation software to turn Chinese messages into English, meaning such messages are riddled with typos, or contain clumsy grammatical structures.
And with many Western outlets inaccessible to them within China, users generally have very little knowledge of who they are meant to be targeting, so they simply piggyback off the replies of others from within the same network.
Graphics by Simon Martin
Related Topics

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-58062630

Typical western tactics.... Liar trying to accuse other as liar. Nothing new.

US plan to discredit Chinese investments unmasked

The United States is sponsoring a strategy to undermine Chinese investments in Zimbabwe by smearing the Asian giant’s companies as engaging in widespread labour malpractices, as well as violation of human, community and environmental rights, among other ills, The Herald has learnt.

www.herald.co.zw

 

[大汉奸柳传志]

twitter was filled with bots already, China is only new to the game

 

[faithfulguy]

Dude for example look at you ,you have Taiwan flag post for China, never seen you post for Taiwan. It's easy for everyone to see that you are a bot.

Posting the truth doesn’t represent I’m for a specific country.Besides Daniel, none of the guys I regard as real journalists above are big China fans. They just believe in professionalism and sharing truth. Also include Chris Hedges, Kim Iversen and Abby Martin.