Google says it has taken down more than 200 YouTube channels that werelinked to the Chinese Communist Party's disinformation campaigntargeting the Hong Kong protests. "Earlier this week, as part of our ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations, we disabled 210 channels on YouTube when we discovered channels in this network behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong," the company, which owns YouTube, said in a post on its official blog.
It said the discovery was "consistent with recent observations" made by Facebook and Twitter, which also shuttered a number of China-linkedaccounts. "We found use of VPNs and other methods to disguise the origin of these accounts and other activity commonly associated with coordinatedinfluence operations," Google said.
Google said it cooperates with "industry partners and law enforcement"when carrying out investigations into influence campaigns using itsplatforms, as well as making use of third-party intelligence. "These actions are part of our continuing efforts to protect the integrity of our platforms and the security and privacy of our users," it said.
