NewsGuard Finds 167 Chinese “Spamouflage” Accounts
PLUS: Satire fuels misinformation about Biden and gas station chain Circle K
Welcome to NewsGuard's Reality Check, a report on how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
Sowing division, hundreds of trolls at a time: NewsGuard finds pro-China network widening ahead of U.S. election
Pump the brakes: Circle K caught in satirical scandal about Biden and pedophiles
The expanding reach of a Trump-aligned meme team
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster and Eric Effron.
AI Content Farm Tracker: 811 Sites and Counting
AI content farms are taking over the internet, and NewsGuard analysts track their spread. Read more about AI content farms and how they are proliferating:
1. Disguised Intentions: Pro-China Network Expands, Aims to Sow Discord During Election Year
By Dimitris Dimitriadis and Macrina Wang
What happened: NewsGuard identified 167 new accounts pushing false and divisive claims as part of a sprawling pro-China influence operation known as “Spamouflage,” or “Spamouflage Dragon.” The findings indicate that the network has a larger reach than previously known and is expanding its efforts to sow discord in the U.S. ahead of the 2024 election.
Spam-o-what? “Spamouflage” is the name of a campaign with suspected links to Chinese authorities that has been tracked by researchers since 2019. The name, blending “spam” and “camouflage” was coined by Graphika, the social media analytics firm that first identified the pro-China campaign. It’s a strategy that involves spreading large volumes of misleading or manipulative content (spam) that is designed to blend in with legitimate information (camouflage).
A closer look: Building on the findings of research organizations, NewsGuard identified 167 accounts not publicly known that appear to be connected to the Spamouflage operation.
Some of our findings:
U.S.-Taiwan conspiracy theory: Dozens of Spamouflage accounts across Medium, YouTube, and various internet forums alleged in late 2023 that the Taiwanese government and the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S.’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, were working together to suppress pro-China voices in the U.S. (The Taiwanese foreign ministry told NewsGuard that the claim was “disinformation” and “false.”)
Exploiting divisions: Some accounts shared content — often sourced from Chinese state media — claiming that the U.S. economy and U.S. democracy are deteriorating, while others targeted major U.S. institutions, like the CDC.
Spamouflage TikTok account gets big engagement: While the network has historically experienced low reach, NewsGuard found one TikTok account that garnered high social media engagement: Positioning itself as a Joe Biden critic and Donald Trump supporter, the account, which goes by the name “Gabbey Grant,” regularly posts content portraying Biden as senile and corrupt. Watch some videos it (Grant) has posted below …
While the account generally reports news accurately, it occasionally spreads misinformation. For example, in September 2023, the account posted a digitally altered video of Biden delivering a speech in July 2022 about a new federal gun safety law. The altered clip, which originally featured a father of a victim of the February 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooting interrupting Biden during a July 2022 White House event, swapped the father’s comments with chants of “F*** Joe Biden.”
NewsGuard contacted YouTube, Medium, TikTok, and others for comment. After NewsGuard’s outreach to Medium, some of the posts within the network appear to have been taken down.
YouTube told NewsGuard that it “terminated 13 channels based on information shared by NewsGuard.”
Medium said: "Well-funded and motivated efforts occasionally attempt to leverage the site for misinformation campaigns as they do other platforms, which we work through internal processes to detect and remove. As a user privacy rule, we can’t provide non-public information about any Medium account."
TikTok did not provide an on-the-record comment to NewsGuard.
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
2. Gas and Gaffes: Satire Fuels False Claims Against Circle K Gas Station
What happened: In a classic case of filling up on fiction, conservative accounts on X are citing a satirical article as evidence that global gas station and convenience store Circle K was sued by the Biden administration for discriminating against “people convicted of child sex crimes.”
The article, titled “Circle K gas station chain hit with LGBT discrimination lawsuit after refusing to hire people convicted of child sex crimes,” was originally published by TheDissidentPost.com, a website that publishes self-described satirical stories primarily targeting Democrats.
TheDissidentPost.com wrote about a fictional lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency that enforces hiring discrimination law. The parody said that the EEOC has accused Circle K of “discriminat[ing] against LGBT job seekers - specifically gay men and trans-women - by automatically weeding out applicants who had been convicted of child sex crimes.”
A closer look: After The Dissident Post posted the article on X, conservative commentators began sharing it as if it was a real news story.
The most widely circulated post was published on X by conservative user @Rothmus, who posted an excerpt of The Dissident Post article with the caption, “Circle K did nothing wrong.” The post, which was first identified by fact-checking news outlet Snopes (Trust Score: 100/100), had 1.2 million views as of April 25, 2024.
Similarly, former UFC fighter Jake Shields shared a screenshot of The Dissident Post captioned, “Instead of telling gay men and trans to stop raping Kids they are suing circle K.” Shields’ post garnered 173,000 views as of April 26, 2024.
Neither Circle K nor TheDissidentPost.com responded to NewsGuard’s April 2024 requests for comment.
Do you work in Trust and Safety for a technology company, in brand safety for advertising or otherwise counter misinformation as part of your job? Find out about NewsGuard’s weekly Risk Briefings, a more detailed briefing for professionals. Click here.
3. And One More Thing: Pro-Trump ‘Meme Team’ Expands Spread of Deepfakes and Forgeries
By Sam Howard
What happened: Social media users posting under the moniker of “Trump’s Online War Machine,” a Trump-aligned collective whose memes and doctored videos have become the source for dozens of viral false narratives, have seen their follower count on X swell 49 percent since June 2023, NewsGuard found using publicly available data from social media monitoring tool Social Blade.
Context: In December 2023, The New York Times (Trust Score: 87.5/100) referred to the group as Trump’s “troll army,” and reported that it had privately strategized with former U.S. President Donald Trump and his presidential campaign.
Trump himself has shared many of the group’s videos on his social media accounts.
A closer look: The coordination is apparently working. NewsGuard has found that 18 of the 26 accounts in the group have cumulatively increased their follower count from 588,267 to 876,402 since June 2023. That’s a 49 percent increase. (Eight of the 26 accounts are not tracked by Social Blade.)
The group’s videos and memes have regularly become the source of viral false narratives, including:
A TikTok video edited to depict U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offering a nonsensical definition of “cease-fire.”
A fake court document on X connecting late physicist Stephen Hawking to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A fake video on X showing U.S. President Joe Biden saying: “I understand how to get things done for the illegal aliens. I encouraged the surge of illegals at the U.S. border.”
Fake CNN footage showing former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton saying: “I'm absolutely ecstatic about this war breaking out in the Middle East.”
A fake image apparently showing “OJ Simpson’s final tweet before dying,” in which the deceased football star supposedly confessed to killing ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson.
After NewsGuard emailed the meme team’s leader, podcaster Brenden Dilley, asking about false claims advanced by the group, he posted a response to his X account, stating: “The fact that you and your gay ass publication don't comprehend obvious humor isn't my problem.” In the collective, one team member's bio states that the account creates “parodies,” and another's bio mentions it posts “doctored videos.” However, no other members' X bios explicitly indicate that their content is satirical.
Fans of Dilley’s meme collective quickly joined in, piling on with over 250 replies to Dilley’s jab. Comments included mocking the NewsGuard reporter with statements including, “This is why we have warning labels on toasters advising not to use them for deep frying,” suggesting the reporter is “definitely quadruple vaxxed,” and dismissing him as “a loser with no life.”
Ahh, the charms of the internet.
Produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
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