Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google just published a blog post revealing that it has disabled 210 YouTube channels that the company says “behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.” Google cites the behavior as being “consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter.” The accounts were disabled earlier this week.
Both Facebook and Twitter recently uncovered and suspended accounts that the social media companies believe were operated by the Chinese government and designed to seed doubt about and undermine the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Twitter suspended nearly 1,000 accounts tied to China, and Facebook removed various pages, groups, and accounts linked to the effort to spread information opposing the protests.
“We found use of VPNs and other methods to disguise the origin of these accounts and other activity commonly associated with coordinated influence operations,” Shane Huntley, from Google’s Threat Analysis Group, wrote in the blog post. “These actions are part of our continuing efforts to protect the integrity of our platforms and the security and privacy of our users.”
Google also used the opportunity to address moves it recently took to counter the government of Kazakhstan, which recently forced citizens to install a security certificate that gave the government broad power to spy on internet activity and “decrypt and read anything a user types or posts, including intercepting their account information and passwords.”
“These actions are part of our continuing efforts to protect the integrity of our platforms and the security and privacy of our users,” said Huntley, adding that Google’s teams “will continue to identify bad actors, terminate their accounts, and share relevant information with law enforcement and others in the industry.”
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