China is using the world's largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds | CNN
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The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.

The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—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 US 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. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.

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.

  • @IonAddisEnglish
    1•11 months ago

    I remember the early days of social media. Once upon a time, Livejournal was THE social media site. A lot of fandom stuff took place on there.

    Then it got sold to Russia, and there’d be days when LJ was weirdly down and unstable (this was before Cloudflare and DDoS protection) for some reason–and I’d learn there was some political strife going on on the Russian-speaking side, because their politicians and thinkers and radicals had made it their online home (long before any politicians in the USA used social media). But I was too young at the time to understand what was going on. All I knew what my fandom space where I talked about books and stuff was having outages due to stuff going on on the Russian-speaking side.

    Basically, Russia was using the platform to perfect manipulating social media on its own citizens. Then it turned around and used it on the English-speaking and western world–and other nations have been watching very keenly, and seeing how effective it’s been. That China would do it too is basically like, “Duh, of course they would. It WORKS.”