Google removes 2,500 China-linked YouTube channels

SAN FRANCISCO: Google has deleted more than 2,500 YouTube channels tied to China as part of its effort to prevent disinformation on the video-sharing platform.

The company said the channels were removed between April and June “as part of our ongoing investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to China.”

The channels generally posted “spammy, non-political content,” but a small subset touched on politics, the company said in a quarterly bulletin on disinformation operations.

Google did not identify the specific channels and provided few other details, except to link the videos to similar activity spotted by Twitter and a disinformation campaign identified in April by social media analytics company Graphika.

The Chinese Embassy in the United States didn’t immediately respond but Beijing has in the past denied allegations of spreading disinformation.

Disinformation seeded by foreign actors has emerged as a concern for American politicians since the 2016 presidential election when Russian government-linked actors pumped hundreds of thousands of deceptive messages on social media.