Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
citizenlab.ca
citizenlab.ca
This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them with auto-translated Chinese newswire and blog stuff, local scraped stuff, etc. and then claims they're "major foreign media outlets", which they then sell access to for the riveting price of just 1.4 million won - about $1000. It looks like a modern take on something like a 419 scam, except I expect they probably do follow through on publishing whatever people submit!
Granted not as exciting a discovery as a shadowy influence operation with a super sexy nickname, but probably more accurate.
I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me.
It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people. It's common knowledge that the Chinese government has a history of censoring information that shows them in a bad light, promoting largely false self-aggrandizing narratives, and attacking anyone who challenges them. It shouldn't be surprising at all that the internet outside of their great firewall is a major focus of their operations. Given a lack of direct sources to determine the truth of the situation, I will always lean towards believing that this is part of their established modus operandi, rather than minimizing it by claiming it's just another "amateur hour scam operation".
I assume you didn't check out the link earlier. Basically it's some sort of a Korean craigslist/ebay type site. The site itself is complete legit - Amazon did a case study of them here. [1] The seller/scammer, "Excelsior Partners" claims to be affiliated with governments, advertising agencies, and so on. And they guarantee publication in more than 10 "major French media outlets." They even offer to take care of translation for you, with their "direct partnership with a professional translation agency." Heh. Of course those "major media sites" are all the ones the article from this thread is talking about.
They're just trying to fill out the site with enough junk that somebody who doesn't know the language, doesn't know the locale, and is naive enough to think you can buy guaranteed article placement in multiple major Western publications for $1k, might think it's real.
Otherwise, how would you explain 24 pages of CGTN propaganda?
In either case, it's a clear link to the CCP. This is no different to what they do on social media as well. They use all established platforms to broaden their reach.
If you want to see this as some sort of a state influence operation, you run into a million issues. The sites are poorly done (template boilerplate is even left up in many places!) and no native would likely consider them "real", there has been exactly 0 effort to advertise or share the sites, the sites seem to be regularly taken down which ruins ranking/viral possibilities, what "propaganda" that does exist on the sites has to be actively searched for, the sites seemingly allow anybody to publish on them, the sites are loaded with stuff that's going to push people away like shady crypto spam (and I say that as a huge fan of crypto!), so forth and so on.
Especially for things like this, I think Occam's Razor is quite sharp.
And they just happen to have mostly political propaganda from CGTN, a CCP mouthpiece? If the intent was only to scam, there are thousands of ways of doing that with better results, without involving propaganda.
> What you see as propaganda, is what somebody else would just see as the equivalent as a stream from e.g. Reuters.
C'mon. If you search for "china" on any of these sites you'll only see pro-China narratives, promoting the One China policy, etc. Western media has its own agenda, sure, but this type of blatant propaganda is only found on fringe publications.
> If you want to see this as some sort of a state influence operation, you run into a million issues.
State run psyops don't need to be sophisticated. Their only goal is to flood the web with their narratives, and lower the signal to noise ratio, so that when people search for specific topics, theirs will hopefully come up. For every attempt that does this right, there are millions more that do a half-assed job at it.
> Especially for things like this, I think Occam's Razor is quite sharp.
Precisely. The CCP runs a well-oiled machine built to pump out disinformation via every public channel available. It takes them no effort to create sites like these, and all steps of the process are likely fully automated. I find the simplest explanation to be that this is just another variant of this, rather than a scam operation that builds dozens of sites with pages upon pages of content just to get people to click on some links, or whatever type of scam this might be. If it quacks like a duck...
I don't think we'll know for sure either way, or convince each other, but cheers for the discussion.
This is particularly important when the topic is divisive. That's in the guidelines too btw.
What does the irrelevant adjective “blatant” have to do with anything? And why is “ad hominem” significant when 95% of politics is about technically fallacious argumentation such as that?
Oh, a 10KUSD FB ad campaign bought by Kremlin and targeted at the US population? Obvious psyop, yes. Also completely irrelevant noise in the scheme of things, just like this apparent “amateur hour” operation.
It’s about having an appropriate response to “bad things”. There is no need to freak out about a few ants in the backyard.
> It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people.
Of course. As “highly educated people” we are supposed to circle the wagons and irrationally blow apparent low-effort (again according to the OP) psyops out of proportion because it’s an enemy regime. That’s after all the primary ideological role of the “highly educated people” (loose source: Chomsky).
E.g., all that pointless spam that doesn't even have a way to buy anything whatsoever? Spammers selling services to people who don't know what they're doing.
It's always amusing/depressing when people claim something, usually something fake-news-ey or propaganda) and link to one of these random Wordpress-looking sites as their "news source". I remember someone linking to a page that claimed that a map of the March 2011 Japanese tsunami effects measured throughout the Pacific[1] was a map of the radiation from the nuclear accident, so people do fall for it, because not everyone is as discerning as us super-clever HN readers. ;)
[1] The map from https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/news-story/new-study-shows-some-co..., but the original caption was under the map and not superimposed on the map, and was cropped by the fake-news peddler.
Dang: Do you think you could raise the length limit by 50 characters or so? Most of the problems I've had with title length limits seem to have been just a few words that I had to squeeze down..
The anecdote here only says "I thought the website was this, and it turned out to be that" .. so many ways that small bit can fail. Very significant world event with actual conflicting information..
[1] https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/russische-trollf...
There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.
It is very different. I and many reading have been here for the time when it didn't happen this way, when the world was not drowning in disinformation.
Turning it into a binary question: 0) It doesn't exist at all, or 1) It exists, makes the question meaningless (and ironically is a common form of misinformation, and technique of disinformation). By binary reasoning, murder exists whether we have law enforcement or not, and cancer always exists so you might as well smoke cigars and work in a coal mine.
But what is the point of saying it's no different? Even if it were true, what do you conclude from that? Why make this argument?
It's not the same at all. At least, IMHO: The volume of disinformation and misinformation is orders of magnitude greater than ever before, as is capability and quality:
1) Volume: The Internet reduces mass communication costs by orders of magnitude, of course, and similarly reduce wide-area communication costs, so people in Russia and China or anywhere can send disinfo to people in the US or UK or West Africa, etc. Also, computers greatly reduce the cost of producing disinfo, by automating it (and now GPTs reduce that mcuh further).
2) Capability: Before, mass communication required going through narrow gate with a gatekeeper. You had to get it on the evening news broadcast or in the newspaper. The gatekeepers were experts who exercised judgement - not always perfect judgment, but they are less easily fooled than non-experts. Now disinfo can go straight to the consumer (disintermediation). The Soviets, dedicated to decades of expert propaganda to reach westerners, I bet would have thought it was an impossible fantasy to communicate directly to individuals!
3) Quality: Through corporate mass surveillance, collecting data on individuals, tracking responses in detail, A/B testing, etc., the effectiveness of the disinfo can be greatly improved - just like advertising. (I'd be interested to know how much it can be improved.)
I do agree with you myself and think that your answer is a great answer to how it is in fact different in the first place.
Or perhaps those who do it better are just undetected.
Reuters is a company in a regulatory and political framework with high degree is freedom of the press and expression, rather than an instrument controlled by a government for the purpose of propaganda.
edit: I forgot that the Epoch Times is also owned by the Falun Gong, an outlet that plays a significant part in US politics. If you are familiar with the Epoch Times, did you know it was owned by the Falun Gong?
Did you know that the Washington Times, another important newspaper, is also Moonie-owned?
Or that the "International Business Times" and Newsweek are likely controlled by the Korean Christian sect The Community?
Such a vague statement. You can say that about anything. Who are the owners? What are their interests? How did Reuters serve those interest? Reuters changed ownership in 2008. Did their content also change after?
Everyone who follows Chinese news knows Epoch Times is affiliated with Falun Gong — [0]. China media make sure of that. Was anyone aware of this fake network of China affiliated websites if not for the investigation of citilab?
I was aware that Epoch was owned by Falun Gong, I was unaware they play a significant part in US politics. What does that mean? I honestly never see it referenced anywhere. I have seen them in free giveaway newspaper containers pre-pandemic, but I would not view that as a sign of influence (the opposite really).
I find it hard to believe the Chinese state would mix in so many crypto scams, but that makes perfect sense for a private group.
Also this article offers little to no proof that the Chinese government is behind these sites. They look more like a network of crypto spam. https://sevillatimes.com/category/presionesoltar/
Why are we putting up with it? We really need a solution. At this point, I'd love a walled garden where I know I'd get quality information. It doesn't have to be perfect, but not misinformation or disinformation. I'd love a search engine that restricted itself to quality sources.
Even from a purely immediate self-interest perspective, why are all these intelligent people accepting such a trash product?
For example, if DuckDuckGo offered a 'quality sources' search, I'd pay for it. I don't want to search the entire Internet - that's madness if you think about it. Why are we doing that?
Isn't this the same as asking for a source of information that is always correct? Has that ever actually existed in any form?
What about lying by omission?
It seems like we're all freaking out about something that has always been true: people lie, say half-truths, distort facts. It's pretty hard to convey only information that is 100% provably true and also tells a complete picture.
That's really taking that definition (if that's the precise definition) to a theoretical extreme! And then you say your extreme is impossible. Yes, I agree!
Screenshot at 100% zoom: https://i.imgur.com/X7bN7hT.png
Can you access that URL or is it being blocked for you?