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.
A lot, likely most, of the trolling we seem to take as a necesserary consquence of social media seems to be influence operations from Russia and China (as the largest players, of course there are others).
That’s what strikes people the most when they go from X to Mastodon. 90% less followers, but more actual engagement and practically none of the harassment.
It seems most people simply don’t troll.
I remember the early days of social media. Once upon a time, Livejournal was THE social media site. A lot of fandom stuff took place on there.
Then it got sold to Russia, and there’d be days when LJ was weirdly down and unstable (this was before Cloudflare and DDoS protection) for some reason–and I’d learn there was some political strife going on on the Russian-speaking side, because their politicians and thinkers and radicals had made it their online home (long before any politicians in the USA used social media). But I was too young at the time to understand what was going on. All I knew what my fandom space where I talked about books and stuff was having outages due to stuff going on on the Russian-speaking side.
Basically, Russia was using the platform to perfect manipulating social media on its own citizens. Then it turned around and used it on the English-speaking and western world–and other nations have been watching very keenly, and seeing how effective it’s been. That China would do it too is basically like, “Duh, of course they would. It WORKS.”
But where’s the proof that China is literally paying them to troll? Why can’t this just be organic trolling from Chinese people and pro-China sympathizers that legitimately just hate the West?
I mean if I thought I could harass politicians and get away with it…
Charges aren’t convictions.
Americans are taught to hate communism from early age, any statement that say “communism is bad” is true, even comming from their government that knownly financed dictatorships and even invades countries in the name of anti-communism. Just remember they elected a president over this, you will not be able to talk pondering about this with an average murica.
If you say anything you are a tankie.
Bring out the whataboutism. I’ve never understood the need for communists to stan for horrible countries anymore than I understand the need for moderates or right wingers to stan for the USA. The USA and China both have horrendous governments, their mode of governments are kind of irrelevant to the fact that they practice massive disinformation, genocide, war, colonialism, ethnocentrism, and concentrate tremendous power at the top. A government loosely tying itself to left wing policy, in name only, doesn’t automatically make it good.
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Cognitive domain, it’s not a new concept.
It’s speculation, with circumstantial evidence at best.
Occums razor, evidence isn’t necessary.
That doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Occam’s razor, this is probably a coordinated troll group. Jumping from that to “and so this is an operation by the Chinese government” requires evidence, though, because Occam’s razor says this is a group of trolls who just do this for fun or as vigilantes.
A coordinated trolling campaign from channers or goons would look basically the same, just with different targets.
Naw man, everyone who can exercise influence by the methods we are broadly referencing is already doing it.
It is harder to explain why the powerful Chineese wouldn’t be doing it when every other relevant group is.
I don’t think there’s proof everyone is using paid agents to systematically troll and harass enemies of the state. This is a pretty specific thing.
Surveillance is one thing. This is different.
I’d believe it if I saw proof, but I don’t see proof. I see circumstantial evidence and speculation.
Saying “troll and harass” doesn’t really do the subject justice. I would rather describe it with the words “manipulate and influence.”
When do you think the manipulation started? It’s certainly not a new concept. It’s inherently human.
It has just evolved in modern times to use the Internet as a tool, but it’s always been happening.
Occams razor most certainly applies here. It doesn’t just apply to foreign governments but also all the nefarious factions around the world.
The evidence is all around you, psyops everywhere.
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