Google’s YouTube suspends 210 channels alleged to have ties to the Chinese government
- ‘We discovered channels in this network behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong,’ Google says
- The move follows similar measures announced this week by US social media platforms Facebook and Twitter
YouTube has suspended scores of accounts alleged to be part of a Chinese government-backed campaign to influence opinion about unrest in Hong Kong, the video-sharing platform’s owner Google announced on Thursday.
“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,” Google said in a blog post.
“This discovery was consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter,” the online search giant’s director of software engineering, Shane Huntley, said in the post.
“We found use of VPNs and other methods to disguise the origin of these accounts and other activity commonly associated with coordinated influence operations,” Huntley added.