Researchers: China-linked fake social media accounts tried to draw Asian-Americans to protests against racism; Facebook, YouTube, Twitter suspended the accounts
FireEye's researchers caught a network of China-linked fake accounts trying to mobilize Asian-Americans into anti-racism protests — an influence operation aimed at stoking domestic US tensions, and one that researchers flagged as echoing tactics long associated with Russian campaigns like the 2016-linked infrastructure behind EU election manipulation. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter moved to suspend the accounts before the effort gained traction.
Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter cut off the network's reach by suspending its accounts, denying the operation access to exactly the audiences it was trying to organize.
FireEye's disclosure hands the platforms and US policymakers attribution evidence for a Chinese campaign targeting Asian-Americans specifically, not generic US voters.
Second-order effects
Platforms face pressure to detect operations that pose as authentic grassroots activism — a harder detection problem than the overt state-media amplification networks they already police, as Facebook's earlier bans of Iranian and Russian inauthentic networks showed.
China-linked operators adapt by shifting tactics and venues; the later Russian campaign that hijacked influential Bluesky accounts shows adversaries moving toward account takeover when fresh fake-account creation gets caught.
Third-order effects
Influence operations are converging on a playbook of manufacturing domestic social movements rather than persuading audiences directly, pushing platforms, researchers like FireEye, and governments toward treating protest-organizing accounts as a distinct trust-and-safety category.
If contractor-driven content farms keep regenerating what takedowns remove, enforcement shifts from per-account suspensions to disrupting the industrial supply chain behind the accounts.
The trend: State-backed influence operations are shifting from broadcasting propaganda to manufacturing fake grassroots activism, with platform takedowns and researcher attributions racing an increasingly industrialized production pipeline.
Looks like China is learning from Russia. But like Russia, I doubt their social media manipulation plays a big role in the spread of panics online, America is pretty good at that without any help. https://www.wsj.com/...
This revelation shows two things: 1) China loves the U.S. woke war and 2) Many progressive Asian Americans are so indoctrinated into their racial identity they would fall for this. https://www.wsj.com/...
In one example, the network of fake social-media accounts linked to China encouraged Asian-Americans to show up to a protest in New York City to “fight back” against unsubstantiated theories Covid-19 was deliberately engineered in a Chinese lab. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
Back in 2019 we disabled channels on YouTube when we discovered this network behaving in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. https://blog.google/...
It really is amazing for all the effort put in how LITTLE engagement these channels get from real viewers. Internally I joke that DRAGONBRIDGE probably gets more views from disinformation researchers than real users.
The analysis of CCP's propaganda against #COVID19 origin is based on numerous attacks & smears towards me & the Yan Reports Clearly, misinformation is spread by CCP with multi-languages,which is a critical tactic in their unrestricted bioweapon strategies! https://www.fireeye.com…
At some point soon - the Biden Admin is going to have to put on its big boy trousers (or whatever the big girl equivalent is) and take on China like the enemy of America that they are https://twitter.com/...
We've now observed this pro-PRC activity taking place on 30 social media platforms and over 40 additional websites and niche forums, and in additional languages including Russian, German, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. Accounts in the pro-PRC 1/2 https://www.fireeye.com/...
“The activity represents the first known example of suspected China-linked actors targeting Americans with the apparent goal of encouraging them to attend real-world demonstrations.” https://www.wsj.com/...
Fake social-media accounts linked to the Chinese government tried to draw Americans out to real-world protests against racism and anti-Chinese Covid-19 rhetoric, according to U.S. security firms. “They're copying the Kremlin's playbook.” https://www.wsj.com/...
“The most significant features of this network remain its scale and persistence, in spite of low engagement levels,” explains @Google TAG director @ShaneHuntley https://twitter.com/...
Fake social-media accounts linked to China tried to draw Americans out to real-world protests against Asian American racism and anti-Chinese Covid-19 rhetoric, according to Mandiant and Google, a tactic that echoes Russia's 2016 election interference. https://www.wsj.com/...
Importantly engagement with their posts is largely inauthentic, coming primarily from other DRAGONBRIDGE accounts and not from genuine users. Among our detections, the majority of channels and videos have zero subscribers or views, respectively.
Much of their activity is posting spammy content in Mandarin such as videos of animals, music, food, etc. A small fraction will then post videos on current events. Defining feature of the messaging is pushing pro-PRC talking points often targeted towards Chinese speakers.
This Chinese information ops campaign continues to grow. 30 social media platforms and 7 languages now. They are now trying to orchestrate demonstrations in the US. Great work by our information ops team. @LeeFosterIntel's Mandiant swan song. https://www.fireeye.com/...
Today @FireEye published a piece on on a pro-PRC coordinated influence actor: https://www.fireeye.com/... Google's TAG has been tracking this actor for 2 years now and we internally call it DRAGONBRIDGE. Some observations: 🧵