Google Removes Chinese Influence Network’s Fake News Sites

On 22 Novem­ber 2024, The Record report­ed that Google has tak­en down hun­dreds of inau­then­tic news sites and domains linked to a Chi­nese influ­ence oper­a­tion run­ning coor­di­nat­ed pro-Bei­jing con­tent. The arti­cle begins:

Google’s secu­ri­ty team has removed hun­dreds of news sites and domains from Google News for run­ning pro-Chi­na con­tent sourced back to a hand­ful of com­pa­nies alleged­ly work­ing togeth­er as part of an influ­ence oper­a­tion. Google’s Threat Analy­sis Group (TAG) and secu­ri­ty sub­sidiary Man­di­ant pub­lished a report detail­ing the oper­a­tions of Glass­bridge, which they say is an umbrel­la group of four com­pa­nies based in Chi­na that oper­ate hun­dreds of inau­then­tic news sites and newswire ser­vices. All of the sites push pro-Chi­na nar­ra­tives in a “high­ly coor­di­nat­ed manner.”…

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Key Points:

1. Google blocked over 1,000 sites oper­at­ed by Glass­bridge, a net­work of four Chi­nese com­pa­nies cre­at­ing fake news out­lets worldwide.
2. The sites tar­get­ed mul­ti­ple regions with coor­di­nat­ed pro-Bei­jing nar­ra­tives while pos­ing as inde­pen­dent local news sources.
3. Con­tent focused on Chi­nese ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims, COVID-19, and oth­er polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive top­ics, often shar­ing iden­ti­cal arti­cles across networks.
4. The cam­paign rep­re­sents a grow­ing trend of nations using pri­vate PR firms for infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions to main­tain plau­si­ble deniability.