China is pushing divisive messages using fake U.S. voters : NPR

A long-running Chinese influence operation is posing as American voters on social media in an attempt to exacerbate social divisions ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a new report from the research company Graphika.

The push by the campaign known as “Spamouflage” includes accounts claiming to be American voters and U.S. soldiers. They posted about hot-button topics including reproductive rights, homelessness, U.S. support for Ukraine, and American policy toward Israel. They criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as well as former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and sometimes used artificial intelligence tools to create content.

The group of fake accounts Graphika identified is small — 15 accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter), one on TikTok, as well as a persona impersonating a U.S. news outlet across platforms. They claimed to be U.S. citizens or U.S.-focused activists “frustrated by American politics and the West,” the report said. With the exception of one TikTok video, they didn’t gain much traction with real users online.

Still, the activity underscores how China is “engaging in these more advanced deceptive behaviors and directly targeting these organic but hyper-sensitive social rifts” as part of a broader effort “to portray the U.S. as this declining global power with weak political leadership and a failing system of governance,” said Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer.

The U.S. intelligence community said in its most recent election security update in late July that China’s influence operations “are using social media to sow divisions in the United States and portray democracies as chaotic.”

However, intelligence officials say they do not believe Beijing plans to influence the outcome of the presidential election, which may explain why the Spamouflage cluster Graphika identified targeted both Democrats and Republicans.

“Generally, the accounts were very critical of Biden, but we also saw them criticizing Trump as well, and in more recent weeks, actually increasingly targeting Kamala Harris since Biden dropped off the ticket,” Stubbs said. “It looks to us like they were attempting to build their fake identities less around an individual party or individual party candidate and more around the idea of U.S. patriotism or national pride.”

Graphika is a research company that studies social networks and online communities for companies, tech platforms, human rights organizations and universities.

The findings build on another report earlier this year from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit which studies extremism and disinformation, that uncovered four other Spamouflage accounts on X posing as supporters of Trump and the MAGA movement.

Graphika first publicly identified the Spamouflage operation in 2019. It’s grown into one of the most sprawling networks of fake accounts across the internet. It has largely focused on pushing pro-China narratives, including attacks on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, praise for China’s COVID-19 response, and AI-generated news videos promoting Chinese leadership. More recently, it has also begun posting about American politics and elections. Last year, Facebook owner Meta linked the operation to Chinese law enforcement.

The accounts Graphika identified bore many hallmarks of Spamouflage activity, including coordinated posting and sharing content that has previously been linked to the operation. Some accounts occasionally slipped up and posted in Chinese. One account on X, calling itself “Common fireman,” was previously branded as a pro-China media outlet, Graphika said.

Stubbs cautioned that the cluster of accounts Graphika found is “one small sliver of this wider operation.” He noted a larger portion of the Spamouflage network is also targeting the U.S. using different types of accounts. “And then there are huge parts of the network that are targeting issues in Hong Kong, for example, or the broader Indo-Pacific, that aren’t directly concerned with the upcoming U.S. election.”

While the cluster’s efforts went largely unnoticed by real people, it did strike one success. A TikTok account posing as a conservative American news outlet and social media influencer posted a video mocking Biden in July that was viewed 1.5 million times, Graphika said.

TikTok said it has taken the account down for violating its policies, as well as the other accounts Graphika identified.

“The TikTok accounts referenced in this report have been banned, and we will continue to remove deceptive accounts and harmful misinformation as we protect the integrity of our platform during the US elections,” a TikTok spokesperson said.

The fake news outlet also has an account on X, and previously had a YouTube channel and Instagram account, both of which have been taken down.

Stubbs said it wasn’t clear why that particular video had been removed, but that occasional hits are possible with a “high volume, low impact” operation like Spamouflage.

“They’re just throwing a lot of stuff out there, and every now and then a little bit of it will stick,” he said. “But it’s probably worth noting that throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that occasionally a piece will stick doesn’t feel to be a recipe for longer term success.”