Google Says It Continues to Monitor an Ineffective Chinese Propaganda Network ⇥ blog.google

Zak Butler of Google:

Today we are sharing updated insights about DRAGONBRIDGE, the most prolific IO actor Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) tracks. DRAGONBRIDGE, also known as “Spamouflage Dragon,” is a spammy influence network linked to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that has a presence across multiple platforms. Despite producing a high amount of content, DRAGONBRIDGE still does not get high engagement from users on YouTube or Blogger.

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Despite their continued profuse content production and the scale of their operations, DRAGONBRIDGE achieves practically no organic engagement from real viewers. In 2023, of the over 57,000 YouTube channels disabled, 80% had zero subscribers. Of the over 900,000 videos suspended, over 65% of their videos had fewer than 100 views, and 30% of their videos had zero views. Despite experimenting with content and producing large amounts of content, DRAGONBRIDGE still does not receive high engagement.

Reporting earlier this year by David Gilbert at Wired indicates this is not an isolated case: these propaganda efforts have been largely unsuccessful. Nevertheless, I appreciate that platform owners like Google are looking out for coordinated campaigns like these and intervening. I hope it would do the same when it is a U.S.-led disinformation campaign — and I would really like to believe it would. It is hilarious to call out any governments trying these tactics and embarrassing them with their weak engagement numbers.

At least, I hope these campaigns keep seeing a milquetoast reception. The alternative is likely terrible, especially for something like that U.S. anti-vaccine initiative.