Google cracks down on 50,000 pro-China propaganda pieces critical of US

More than 50,000 pieces of content shared by pro-China accounts have been blocked by Google across various platforms like YouTube, Blogger, and AdSense, said the company on Thursday. The group 'Spamouflage Dragon' and 'DRAGONBRIDGE' have been blocked as per Google's Threat Analysis Group blog. These groups had pro-China views and included a higher volume of content critical of the US. 

"The DRAGONBRIDGE Channels and blog post promotes pro-China messages and criticizes the US. The channel's pro-China content included narratives praising China's pandemic response, criticism of pro-democracy protests, and significantly in 2022, more strident support for unification with Taiwan," read the statement in the blog published on January 26. 

Following Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, the accounts shifted some of its focus toward the former White House Speaker. The group DRAGONBRIDGE targeted and criticized the US with posts mostly in Mandarin, English, and other languages.

Google blocks pro-China accounts

Threat Analysis Group's mission understood and countered serious threats, including actors engaged in coordinated information operations (IO) and terminated over 100,000 DRAGONBRIDGE accounts in the IO network's lifetime, stated TAG in the blog. 

However, DRAGONBRIDGE has not been able to achieve organic engagement from real viewers in 2022 and 80% of DRAGONBRIDGE videos had fewer than 100 views with the majority of their channels with zero subscribers. 

"Blogger engagement metrics also show almost no authentic audience for DRAGONBRIDGE's blogs. For blogs terminated in December, nearly 95% of DRAGONBRIDGE blogs received 10 or fewer views, and over 96% received no comments," the statement read. 

Further, the statement also shared the group's narrative against the US, which they claimed was "for stoking tensions abroad and meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries". They have been portraying US society and democracy in a "negative light", it said.  According to the statement, in 2022, "Google removed DRAGONBRIDGE content on topics such as the US COVID-19 response, racial inequality, political divisions, inflation, and other controversial topics."

(With agency inputs)