Graphika, an independent U.S. social media research firm, has released a report that indicates that millions of fake social media accounts are systematically and organizationally speaking up for the Chinese Communist Party and going even further to criticize and undermine U.S. efforts to combat the Epidemic. The report names Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, several Chinese ambassadors abroad, Hong Kong New People’s Party member Chen Zhihao, and online media outlet “Hong Kong People Speak Out” as being involved in spamouflage. The agency that issued the report concluded that the activities were organized and funded behind the scenes, but could not identify the mastermind.
The report noted that the fake accounts emerged as early as 2018; in 2019, they focused on attacking Hong Kong’s “anti-China” protest movement; and in 2020, after the global outbreak of the new pneumonia epidemic, the focus of these online activities changed to speak in favor of China. The report said that as early as February last year, social media accounts praised China for its quick response to the epidemic, and in June the Chinese Communist Party’s online army attacked the United States for failing to control the epidemic.
The report noted that the videos were mostly cobbled together from news footage and were full of bias and even contained a lot of false information. For example, the report noted that one of the fake videos, titled “Vaccines will not get America out of this mess,” accuses Pfizer and BioNTech of developing a new vaccine, “Vaccine”, without evidence. The film accuses Pfizer and BioNTech of developing a new pneumonia vaccine with “questionable safety” and suggests that U.S. authorities are urgently approving the use of the vaccine without regard for public safety.
The report points out that this type of false information has been disseminated globally by numerous netizens, online media, and even Chinese diplomats. The report named the YouTube channel of Hong Kong New People’s Party community director Chan Chi Ho, “Chan Chi Ho Info Channel,” and Hong Kong’s pro-establishment online media, “Hong Kong People Talking Land,” for their role in disseminating fake information.
The report also mentioned that tens of thousands of fake social media accounts have been bought on a large scale since 2018 to mislead the public. In 2020 alone, YouTube has deleted more than 20,000 fake accounts, Twitter in August 2019 and last June two times “fight fake”, Graphika also in September 2019 with Facebook cooperation, identify and delete fake accounts. The report points out that the other side’s tactics have also “evolved”, and from mid-2020 onwards, the online activities of fake accounts have become more and more like real people.
In particular, the report named a Twitter account named “He Jingrun,” which was registered in 2009 and had been inactive since then, but in January 2020 suddenly began reposting the above-mentioned pro-communist videos and even interacting with political figures online, with posts retweeted by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. Reports indicate that the Chinese ambassadors to Iran, the Dominican Republic, France and Panama have all reposted and interacted with the fake accounts. The “He Jingrun” account has now been shut down by Twitter.
Graphika researcher Ben Nimmo pointed out that although the activities of these fake accounts have apparently evolved, there are still a lot of flaws, such as inactive for a long Time in the past, and some fake accounts used to use, for example, Bengali, but suddenly switched to Chinese in recent years; fake accounts will upload a certain spam fake information video at the same time, are all traceable.
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