Google disables 210 Youtube channels amid Hong Kong protests

Google on Thursday said it disabled 210 YouTube channels after it found that they appeared to be part of a coordinated influence campaign against pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The announcement comes days after Twitter and Facebook said they would suspend nearly 1,000 accounts that were linked to a state-backed disinformation campaign originating from inside China.

Twitter said it had shut down about 200,000 more before they could inflict any damage.

"These accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground," Twitter said, referring to the active accounts it shut down.

Facebook said some of the posts from accounts it banned compared the protesters in Hong Kong with ISIS group militants, branded them "cockroaches" and alleged they planned to kill people using slingshots.

Google’s move also comes after the company and its video platform face scrutiny from lawmakers regarding its ability to control misinformation that goes viral on its site, particularly as the 2020 presidential elections near.

“Earlier this week, 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,” Shane Huntley, director of software engineering for Google Security’s Threat Analysis Group said in a blog post.

“We found use of VPNs and other methods to disguise the origin of these accounts and other activity commonly associated with coordinated influence operations.”

Google stopped short of explicitly blaming the Chinese government for the misleading accounts.