Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has burned more than 50,000 spammy fake news stories and other content posted by the pro-China 'Dragonbridge' gang.
Dragonbridge ran disinformation campaigns across Google-owned platforms YouTube, Blogger and AdSense. Meta and Twitter have also removed fake content from China that looks and sounds very similar to Dragonbridge's efforts. The TAG team has also terminated 100,900 Dragonbridge accounts since 2019, Googlers Zak Butler and Jonas Taege wrote in a Thursday
post. Dragonbridge is a pro-China, anti-US crew that, among other things, tried to meddle in the 2022 American midterm elections and trolled rare-earth mining companies using thousands of phony social media accounts, prompting a stern finger-wagging by the Pentagon. It is also the most prolific information-operations threat actor that TAG tracks, according to Google. But despite pumping out a ton of fake content, Dragonbridge has captured little attention.
TAG disabled 53,177 Dragonbridge YouTube channels last year. Of these, "58 percent had zero subscribers and 42 percent of their videos had zero views," Butler and Taege wrote, adding that 83 percent of those videos had less than 100 views. They group didn't fare much better on the Blogger platform, where almost 95 percent of posts that TAG terminated were viewed ten times or fewer. Whatever Dragonbridge lacks in terms of audience recruitment success, , the group makes up for it with persistence and adaptability, according to Google. Over the three years that Google's investigators have tracked Dragonbridge, the China-based crew has constantly tried new tactics and created better-quality content, we're told. This includes producing talk-show format videos with real people discussing current events, and "high-quality" beauty advice and cooking tips.
"As they evolve over time, Dragonbridge's coordinated inauthentic activity may eventually attract the attention of real users," Butler and Taege said. "For this reason, TAG and Mandiant track Dragonbridge closely and Google has taken an aggressive approach to identifying and removing their content."
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