r/technology • u/Regular_Eggplant_248 • Jul 21 '25

Social Media YouTube wipes out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/21/youtube-channels-propaganda-china-russia.html
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u/scr0tal Jul 21 '25

Google announced Monday the removal of nearly 11,000 YouTube channels and other accounts tied to state-linked propaganda campaigns from China, Russia and more in the second quarter.

The takedown included more than 7,700 YouTube channels linked to China.

These campaigns primarily shared content in Chinese and English that promoted the People’s Republic of China, supported President Xi Jinping and commented on U.S. foreign affairs.

Over 2,000 removed channels were linked to Russia. The content was in multiple languages that supported Russia and criticized Ukraine, NATO and the West.

Google, in May, removed 20 YouTube channels, 4 Ads accounts, and 1 Blogger blog linked to RT, the Russian state-controlled media outlet accused of paying prominent conservative influencers for social media content ahead of the 2024 election.

Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — all staunch supporters of President Donald Trump — made content for Tenent Media, the Tennessee company described in the indictment, according to NBC News.

YouTube began blocking RT channels in March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The active removal of accounts is part of the Google Threat Analysis Group’s work to counter global disinformation campaigns and “coordinated influence” operations.

Google’s second quarter report also outlined the removal of influence campaigns linked to Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Romania and Ghana that were found to be targeting political rivals.

Some campaigns centered on growing geopolitical conflicts, including narratives on both sides of the Israel-Palestine War.

YouTube declined to provide further comment on the removal.

Google took down more than 23,000 accounts in the first quarter.

Meta announced last week it removed about 10 million profiles for impersonating large content producers through the first half of 2025 as part of an effort by the company to combat “spammy content.”

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u/awesomemc1 Jul 21 '25

Didn’t know that more than 7,700 YouTube channels are linked to China. Spamouflage sure is working on YouTube but still..damn that much?!

25

u/Infinite_Lemon_8236 Jul 22 '25

Spamouflage? 7,700 channels out of the ~2.70 billion google has available worldwide is practically nothing. Not even a fraction of the drop going into the bucket, more like a singular water molecule going along for the ride.

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u/Smith6612 Jul 22 '25

I wonder how much storage Google freed up by removing these poopaganda accounts. 

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u/BigEdsHairMayo Jul 22 '25

Probably not much. Every account is technically a channel, even if there's nothing uploaded. If you've ever clicked into one of the obvious propaganda accounts, it's usually just a few playlists and nothing else.

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u/MichaelMeier112 Jul 22 '25

And bandwidth for their bots to up/down vote contents

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u/mayorofdumb Jul 22 '25

The funnier part is if they were getting paid for their propaganda. With technology they can a million YouTube channels and make them all have 10 billion views. This is them trying to find the limits and probably learning from whatever the CIA did to them.

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u/uzu_afk Jul 22 '25

I think it’s A LOT more. On top of that take all the ‘influencers’ who get ‘campaigns’ and only have to record themselves saying something perhaps not even contentious in immediate nature, that is directly linked to state actor platforms like radicalizing and dividing people and pushing anti democratic foreign state controlled and paid ‘alternative parties’ towards power.

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u/awesomemc1 Jul 22 '25

You do have a good point. But in some channel and chances that they may be linked through MCN (multi-channel network) or legitimate creators who got paid by their network or their agency can sponsor creator to go to other states to say something good about it. It could well be possible.

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u/el_muchacho Jul 22 '25

Don't forget that all accounts have a channel, even without any video. So the accounts served to spam the comments.

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u/catinterpreter Jul 22 '25

There would've been a bunch of legitimate channels deleted too.

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u/Krraxia Jul 22 '25

Are they channels which post videos, or channels that only post comments? If the former, good. If the latter, it's a drop in a bucket.

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u/technobrendo Jul 22 '25

I feel like their padding the numbers just a bit. 7700 for just one country, abiet a kinda major one, just seems a bit optimistic.

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u/ninja-squirrel Jul 22 '25

I don’t know, it could be accurate. Maybe all they want is for these videos to all link to each other. They don’t think anyone is watching all of them. They just need to give the illusion that this is the majority opinion. They just need the thumbnails to pop up under “related videos” to help give them legitimacy.

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u/red-cloud Jul 22 '25

See how free we are? We don’t have government censorship in the USA because our corporate overlords do it voluntarily!!

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u/sw00pr Jul 22 '25

I would like the ability to verify that these channels are bad. And see what other evidence YT has against them. Frankly, I don't trust any The Man to tell me what is and isn't safe to watch. Transparency is all I ask.

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u/TheHumanite Jul 22 '25

Seems like they're just saying that since they were pro China or pro Russia, they were bad which, boy am I glad to be so free. Not like those censored and propagandized Russians and Chinese folks!

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u/sblahful Jul 22 '25

You're allowed to run state sponsored content, you just need to have a banner declaring it. The BBC has one, for instance. I'm guessing these channels did not. But yeah, ideally we'd see much more transparency from these companies.

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u/niet_tristan Jul 22 '25

The articles say the channels were explicitly state-linked. The Russian state is actively waging a war, kidnapping Ukrainian children, committing war crime en masse against Ukrainians and their own alike, wiping out minorities by sending them to the front, heavily oppressing LGBTQ people and murdering political opponents... so it is very safe to make the educated assumption that whatever these state-linked accounts were sharing was not beneficial to anyone.

Obviously we are not immune to propaganda. But you are a fool if you think that these Kremlin-funded channels were sharing even a grain of truth.

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u/TheHumanite Jul 22 '25

I didn't say they were spreading truth. It was definitely propaganda. It just doesn't seem worse than our propaganda. Recall our own complicity and assistance to daily war crimes.

0

u/Trollsense Jul 28 '25

The world does not revolve around Gaza and Israel.

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u/bozzie_ Jul 22 '25

America, China and Russia are not the only countries in the world.

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u/TheHumanite Jul 22 '25

Agreed. Thanks for participating.

1

u/Sam_Porgins Jul 22 '25

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom to say whatever you want without consequences, and it doesn’t mean private corporations are required to give you a platform.

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u/uzu_afk Jul 22 '25

Is me selling you snake oil for a lot of money while you wither away from preventable disease freedom? I don’t think freedom should trump law, because at the end of the day we have to live with each other in a society. If we didn’t we’d be killing ourselves daily. So how free are we? Free enough to identify the bullshit and defend against it. And that should go both ways.

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u/uzu_afk Jul 22 '25

Just in time for them ti allow 30000 accounts by the time new elections start…

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u/green_tumble Jul 22 '25

Only USA propaganda allowed.

0

u/pizzasushipasta Jul 22 '25

And when will they delete Tim pool, Prager u, newsmax, maga channels since they are combatting disinformation? 🤨🤨🤨