COORDINATED EFFORT

Pro-China Trolls Flooding Social Media With Anti-U.S. Propaganda: Report

The troll network used stolen accounts to post videos attacking Trump’s handling of COVID-19, his crackdown on Tiktok and racism in the United States.

A group of pro-China social media trolls has been spamming social media with videos critical of President Trump and full of praise for Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from the disinformation tracking firm Graphika. The troll network, dubbed Spamouflage Dragon by Graphika, used stolen accounts on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, some with AI-generated avatars, to post videos attacking Trump’s handling of COVID-19, his crackdown on the Tiktok app owned by the Chinese firm Bytedance, and racism in the United States. Graphika wasn’t able to identify who was behind the network but the accounts are linked to previous Chinese government-linked troll activity suspended by Twitter for using sock puppets to criticize protests in Hong Kong and Chinese billionaire exile Guo Wengui.