CNN —The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found. Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they’re outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day. As part of a mission “to manipulate public perceptions of [China], the Group uses its misattributed social media accounts to threaten, harass and intimidate specific victims,” the complaint states. In the past, the Spamouflage network mostly focused on issues domestically relevant to China.
