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.

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
    111·
    1 year ago

    From the article…

    But Linvill of Clemson University argues that the network uses a unique strategy of “flooding” conversations with so many comments that posts from genuine users receive less attention.

    “They are operating thousands of accounts at a time on a given platform, often to drown out conversations, just with sheer volume of messaging,” Linvill said. “When we think of disinformation, we often think of pushing ideas on users and making ideas more salient, whereas what China is doing is the opposite. They are trying to remove conversations from social media.”

    This is what’s always concerned me, more than anything else.

    If you can’t shape the narrative, you might as well destroy the environment any other narrative that would come from it. An anti-control, basically.

    As an analogy, a band at a party that plays it’s music so loud that no one can hear each other to be able to talk to each other.

    If we don’t get these bots/shills under control then meaningful conversation will never happen again in any large scale, and any chance for peace at a species level goes with it.

    The center will not hold.