this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023

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China is using the world's largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds (www.cnn.com)

submitted 2 years ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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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 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.

(page 4) 50 comments

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[–] Cannacheques@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago

The tall end of this entire article is the obtuse question of how much money is really in the game and how much is the service really worth in terms of providing real value?

How much do these disinformation campaign people get, who are they and how do they operate their systems? Let's imagine that they're paying small groups of guys to carry four phones and to search for a topic online on Reddit or Facebook and post n number of comments on the thread every time they get the opportunity to from each of the four phones, with another four accounts per phone, then using a script to monitor every account.

All that an adversary hacker would need is a hunter bot to detect the phones all by geolocation, microphone to see how many people are there, then block the phones. The reality is that even if you had multiple bots hacking someone's phones to do the job, the real value provided simply cannot outweigh the investment costs in the long run. Disinformation and propaganda as a weapon is more blurry in outcomes than simply building a bridge. Hell even sex work arguably works better for most than to spam their newsfeed

[–] shirro@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Obviously a lot of state actors are involved in forms of information warfare including China and they certainly have the resources to be very effective in that area.

You follow the money and a lot of the time it is going to end up the same place as a disproportionate amount of the world's capital which is in the USA and the west in general. The amount of damage the fossil fuel industry has done to the world is immeasurable and makes China insignificant by comparison. They funded anyone who would take their side and supported many forms of extremism in the process, all to prolong the value of their investments at the cost of leaving a horrendous legacy for future generations.

I am concerned about China's massive military expansion and their impact on regional stability, but dealing with that is on a whole different level of concern to some of the other influences on our media and politics.

Obligatory fuck the CCP, but also they aren't going anywhere unless the Chinese population fights for democracy and we aren't setting a great example for them while we refuse to participate in and improve the democracy we have.

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