Internet giant Google has suspended 210 Youtube channels that were part of a campaign by the Chinese authorities which aimed to spread disinformation around the Hong Kong protests.
“We discovered channels in this network behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong,” Google says
Their purpose was to discredit participants in the demonstrations. A few days ago, Facebook and Twitter also announced that they had closed about a thousand accounts for the same reason.
For nearly three months, Hong Kong has been engulfed in anti-government protests.
“As part of our ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations, we disabled 210 channels on YouTube when we discovered channels in this network behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong,” Google said in a blog post.