Google Removes Over 50,000 Contents Promoting Pro-China Disinformation

An unnamed Chinese hacker using his computer at their office in Dongguan, in China's southern Guangdong Province, on Aug. 4, 2020. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images

Google took down over 50,000 pieces of content shared by a pro-China online disinformation campaign known as “Dragonbridge” across various platforms over the past year, the company’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said on Jan. 26.

These contents were removed from YouTube, Blogger, and AdSense. TAG said in a statement that a total of 100,960 Dragonbridge accounts had been terminated since the campaign was discovered in 2019.

The U.S. tech giant identifies Dragonbridge as “a spammy influence network linked to China,” which posts mostly low-quality content with no political message and has accounts on multiple platforms.

TAG said that Dragonbridge narratives in 2022 ranged from China’s COVID-19 response to the war in Ukraine, including “a higher volume of content critical of the United States.”

Dragonbridge failed to generate organic engagement from real users despite its profuse content production, according to TAG, with nearly 95 percent of the blogs terminated last month receiving less than 10 views.

About 58 percent of the 53,177 Dragonbridge channels disabled on YouTube last year had no subscribers, and 42 percent of the videos posted on these channels had zero views, the research group said.

“In the rare cases where Dragonbridge content did receive engagement, it was almost entirely inauthentic, coming from other Dragonbridge accounts and not from genuine users. Comment activity was mostly from other Dragonbridge accounts,” TAG said.

However, the group cautioned that Dragonbridge has persisted in modifying its methods to attract real users, including the production of animated political cartoons and higher-quality apolitical content.

“As they evolve over time, Dragonbridge’s coordinated inauthentic activity may eventually attract the attention of real users. For this reason, TAG and Mandiant track Dragonbridge closely and Google has taken an aggressive approach to identifying and removing their content.”

US Political System Targeted

Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant reported on Oct. 26, 2022, that Dragonbridge—in an effort to influence the U.S. midterm elections in November 2022—aggressively tried to create conflicts between the United States and its allies and within the U.S. political system.

According to the report, Dragonbridge accounts posted a video in English on multiple social media platforms in September 2022, attempting to discourage Americans from voting in the U.S. midterm elections by questioning the effectiveness of the U.S. government.

The video asserted that the cure for the United States is to “root out this ineffective and incapacitated system.” It also criticizes the legislative process for not having any tangible impact on Americans.

It also states that Dragonbridge altered news articles to create fabricated content that falsely claimed that APT41, a hacker group with ties to Beijing, was backed by the U.S. government.

Mandiant has been monitoring and reporting on it since June 2019. Believed to have been formed amid the Hong Kong anti-extradition protests, Dragonbridge’s early narratives included discrediting Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.

In June 2022, the disinformation campaign targeted U.S., Canadian, and Australian rare earth mining companies that posed a threat to China’s dominance in the rare earth industry.

Kelly Song contributed to this report.