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.

The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.

The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.

Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.

  • cannache@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    Let’s put the western dogma aside here for just a moment.

    The other thing you have to consider is that all governments, authoritarian or democratic are just another institute or system inside of a society.

    Due to the human tendency for entropy, everyone has a different idea of what works and what is fair, and in a growing, and increasingly complex world, democratic and authoritarian regimes still somewhat coexist but may attack each other’s systems by disinformation and propaganda campaigns, but 9/10 rationality and conscience will support systems that provide utility and potential for innovation first, second to the next system that simply contains or prevents the worst of human tendencies - the reason is very simple. If you imagine you were born without a conscience or worse, simply to commit familicide, but the only thing holding you back was being busy with a job or doing something more meaningful that made you feel good, you would probably prefer to pick both, but still favour the one that keeps you busy so that you can think of better things to do while your planning something evil so that you can give yourself time to change your mind before you make a decision.

    Communism more often than not gives people the short term illusion that they’re doing something useful, like for Che, until they realise they’d arguably still be able to apply the same function within a capitalist or anarcho-communalistic setting, it’s just a question of how useful and how much good do you think you can do before you feel competitive 😉