The Chinese Communist Party has been active on YouTube for many years. But spotting its influence is becoming harder.
Paid agitators are flooding the comment section, and influencers, from America and Europe, are producing propaganda videos in exchange for cash from the Chinese regime, an Epoch Times review has found.
In December 2024, YouTube said it removed more than 20,000 channels over three months because of their connection with the Chinese regime.
“[The CCP] has manipulated the public opinion space, especially on YouTube, in the past two, three years, to really focus on using foreign faces, and not people from China ... to try to legitimize their claims,” said David Zhang. He runs the “China Insider with David Zhang” channel, which has more than 1.3 million subscribers, and previously, a program at The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD.
Prominent YouTubers said they were approached by people offering hundreds of dollars to get them to post videos against Falun Gong, a faith group that the Chinese regime particularly targets. One of them is political commentator Tim Pool.
“At some point, I got an email where they were like, ‘We’ll give you $200 to post this video to your YouTube channel,‘” Pool said in an October 2024 podcast. “It was like a mini doc that was like 5 to 10 minutes long from some white dude complaining about this group [Falun Gong]. And I’m like, ’I ain’t posting that to my channel, what is this?'”
On the social media platform X, an Epoch Times host active on YouTube was contacted in August 2024 with an offer to provide information on Falun Gong for cryptocurrency. The person, claiming to be a journalist from an independent media, used a stock photo as the profile image.
YouTubers critical of the Chinese regime also reported a sudden drop in traffic around November 2024. Chris Chappell, host of “China Uncensored” with 2 million subscribers, said his users said videos no longer showed up in their feed and suggested videos.
While YouTube has attributed such a drop to reduced viewer engagement, Chappell said he has seen other YouTubers experiencing similar issues around the same period.
In contrast, Zhang said, when he made some of his videos appear to be promoting China, “get immediately pushed out to be notified to subscribers, to the general audience.”
“This is artificially affecting what the engagement is,” said Chappell. .
—Eva Fu
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