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Google has blocked hundreds of fake news services and websites from its search results, on the grounds that they were serving up Chinese propaganda.
The firm’s Threat Analysis Group said that an umbrella group of four different companies, dubbed Glassbridge, has been creating and operating hundreds of domains that pose as independent news websites from dozens of countries.
In fact, though, the content involves narratives aligned to the political interests of the People’s Republic of China – and the company has now blocked more than a thousand Glassbridge-operated websites from appearing in Google News features and Google Discover.
“We cannot attribute who hired these services to create the sites and publish content, but assess the firms may be taking directions from a shared customer who has outsourced the distribution of pro-PRC content via imitation news websites,” said senior threat analyst Vanessa Molter.
“By using private PR firms, the actors behind the information operations gain plausible deniability, obscuring their role in the dissemination of coordinated inauthentic content.”
The most prolific of the firms is Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., with Google having removed more than 600 policy-violating domains, mainly targeting English- and Chinese-speaking audiences. Its news sites, said Google, are generally low quality, with spammy and repetitive content politically aligned to the views of the Chinese government. This includes articles on Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, Taiwan, ASEAN, Falun Gong, Xinjiang, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Paperwall, meanwhile, was operating a network of more than 100 websites across more than 30 countries masquerading as local news outlets. Content included character attacks against the Chinese virologist Yan Limeng, along with claims that the US is conducting biological experiments on humans.
Google has also blocked Durnbridge, a firm operating a network of more than 200 websites designed to look like independent media outlets. While most of the sites’ content consisted of news and press releases from various sources, with no obvious links to coordinated influence campaigns, some included pro-China narratives and content directly linked to campaigns from Haixun and Dragonbridge.
And finally, Shenzhen Bowen Media’s sites presented themselves as local outlets focused on a particular country or city, but included include narratives promoting the Chinese government’s interests.
“The inauthentic news sites operated by Glassbridge illustrate how information operations actors have embraced methods beyond social media in an attempt to spread their narratives. We have observed similar behavior from Russian and Iranian [information operations] IO actors,” said Molter.
“By posing as independent, and often local news outlets, IO actors are able to tailor their content to specific regional audiences and present their narratives as seemingly legitimate news and editorial content.”