Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

https://citizenlab.ca/2024/02/paperwall-chinese-websites-posing-as-local-news-outlets-with-pro-beijing-content/

by kieto • 2 years ago

248 63 2 years ago

vdaea• 2 years ago

I visited one of those sites, https://sevillatimes.com/ , and absolutely none of the articles posted there talk about the city, not even about the country where the city is in. So nobody would think that website is a local news website.

Also this article offers little to no proof that the Chinese government is behind these sites. They look more like a network of crypto spam. https://sevillatimes.com/category/presionesoltar/

Maken• 2 years ago

I think they are not trying to target Spain but rather some country in Latin America, possibly Colombia. Weird enough, all their news seem to be reposted from a Dominican newspaper but there is no Sevilla there. Maybe they thought it was close enough.

dash2• 2 years ago

I doubt if lots of websites all saying "[Chinese scientist who made allegations about Covid] is a complete rumor maker" are crypto spam. The Chinese government seems like a plausible patron.

gs17• 2 years ago

It's also very likely that both are paying customers. The article doesn't accuse it of being run by the government directly, they specifically refer to it as a private firm.

dmonitor• 2 years ago

The strategy would be to post the articles to facebook. Nobody goes to a specific website to see the news anyway. The website just exists to be linked to by facebook and look “legit enough”

feverzsj• 2 years ago

[flagged]

dang3• 2 years ago

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sva_• 2 years ago

Seems bad, but tbh not terribly sophisticated. I imagine one could do a lot worse in filler content generation using LLMs as well as better obfuscation techniques for the servers.

Or perhaps those who do it better are just undetected.

CrazyStat3• 2 years ago

What is up with the font rendering on this website? It looks terrible at default zoom (100%), looks fine if I change it to 90% or 110%. Chrome 120.0.6099.200 on Windows 11.

Screenshot at 100% zoom: https://i.imgur.com/X7bN7hT.png

lolinder• 2 years ago

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

CrazyStat3• 2 years ago

It’s an earnest question, not a complaint. I looked at and messed around with the CSS a bit but I’m not a web dev so I don’t know what the problem is.

aembleton• 2 years ago

Looks OK for me. Its loading the font from https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/themes/citizenlab-wp-theme/...

Can you access that URL or is it being blocked for you?

CrazyStat3• 2 years ago

Not blocked, I'm able to access it fine.

netsharc• 2 years ago

Seeing the screenshot of the headlines, "mimic" (HN title) is a different to "posing as" (article title). If I can extrapolate from 3 headlines screenshot there, the sites have generic boring looks (maybe they're Wordpress sites), but they pose to be a news site for Sevilla, Rome, or Milan. Whereas when "mimicking", I would expect them to be copying the design of well-known news sites (I've seen fake CNN-looking sites).

It's always amusing/depressing when people claim something, usually something fake-news-ey or propaganda) and link to one of these random Wordpress-looking sites as their "news source". I remember someone linking to a page that claimed that a map of the March 2011 Japanese tsunami effects measured throughout the Pacific[1] was a map of the radiation from the nuclear accident, so people do fall for it, because not everyone is as discerning as us super-clever HN readers. ;)

[1] The map from https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/news-story/new-study-shows-some-co..., but the original caption was under the map and not superimposed on the map, and was cropped by the fake-news peddler.

drewg123• 2 years ago

I'm not the submitter, but there is a length limit on post titles. I've run into this before with articles whose titles exceed that limit, and I've had to "edit" the titles to fit. I imagine the submitter had the same issue, and didn't catch the different connotation of "mimic" vs "posing as", which does seem to change the meaning some.

Dang: Do you think you could raise the length limit by 50 characters or so? Most of the problems I've had with title length limits seem to have been just a few words that I had to squeeze down..

kieto• 2 years ago

Submitter here, this is exactly what happened, I hit the length limit with the non-editorialized title, so I tried to reduce it the best I could :)

mistrial9• 2 years ago

meanwhile, a woman from Japan came to visit the David Brower Center in Berkeley soon after the meltdown, because someone there had been recording TEPCO and National Radiation Levels info since the Fukishima events. Those recordings were in dispute, they did not match. There was intense national interest, international science poking in, and in fact the public records were in dispute.

The anecdote here only says "I thought the website was this, and it turned out to be that" .. so many ways that small bit can fail. Very significant world event with actual conflicting information..

boomboomsubban2• 2 years ago

So Chinese people are running some of the low quality spam content farms that have been plaguing the internet for years, seemingly primarily for financial reasons like the rest of them. The only real difference is their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West.

andsoitis• 2 years ago

their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West.

Reuters is a company in a regulatory and political framework with high degree is freedom of the press and expression, rather than an instrument controlled by a government for the purpose of propaganda.

pessimizer• 2 years ago

Reuters is an outlet completely captured by its owners, for whatever purposes that benefit its owners, exactly like whatever this is. UPI is owned by the Moonies. The Falun Gong have multiple OTA television stations in the US that give no indication that they are owned by the Falun Gong.

edit: I forgot that the Epoch Times is also owned by the Falun Gong, an outlet that plays a significant part in US politics. If you are familiar with the Epoch Times, did you know it was owned by the Falun Gong?

Did you know that the Washington Times, another important newspaper, is also Moonie-owned?

Or that the "International Business Times" and Newsweek are likely controlled by the Korean Christian sect The Community?

pphysch• 2 years ago

Reuters has been linked to covert government influence operations regarding Russia and Syria. Their "trust principles" facade is just that. They are no more reliable than any other serious news outlet, from China, Russia, or America. They publish things that their owners find acceptable.

signatoremo2• 2 years ago

By Chinese people, for financial reasons? How can you be so sure it isn’t part of China’s effort to influence the public in those countries?

boomboomsubban2• 2 years ago

The article itself says it serves financial interests, and the internet is full of non-Chinese groups doing the same thing primarily for financial reasons.

I find it hard to believe the Chinese state would mix in so many crypto scams, but that makes perfect sense for a private group.

stratigos• 2 years ago

China makes war through deception and gaslighting, not through tanks and bombs. They declared war on the entire world more than two decades ago.

dang3• 2 years ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, regardless of which nation. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mschuster91• 2 years ago

Nothing new, sadly. Before the 2016 and 2020 election, fake news farms in Macedonia made the rounds [1] - these were in it for the money, and in 2015 there were reports about Russian propaganda farms targeting Serbia and the rest of Europe [2].

[1] https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/russische-trollf...

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

Yes, back before You-Know-Who neutralized the phrase "fake news" by turning it into a generic insult to disparage legitimate news organizations, the big story was all these actual fake newspapers popping up, made to look legitimate, but actually pumping out nonsense and political propaganda instead. Suddenly the phenomenon just stopped getting reported on, and we now mostly forget that these fake sites even exist.

lostlogin• 2 years ago

As an aside ‘You-Know-Who’ is an immediate Harry Potter reference for me.

avgcorrection2• 2 years ago

Oh please. Your Voldemort never had the power to neutralize that term. People who were clued-in enough to know about Fake News before Trump wasn’t swayed in their belief. And people who were blissfully aware of it (of reality) would just think that it was a new “Trump Thing” and then delude themselves into thinking that getting rid Trump would be the same as getting rid of Fake News (quotation marks may or may not apply).

xbmcuser• 2 years ago

This is the time of information warfare I guess they learned something from India "Pro-Indian 'fake websites targeted decision makers in Europe'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764

reaperducer• 2 years ago

In the U.S., rich people and political organizations are actually buying or setting up real newspapers in small towns so that when they post fake news on social media, they can reference a dead tree "news source" that is actually their own P.R. machine.

There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.

psunavy03• 2 years ago

This is no different from the majority of US history. Partisan/slanted news outlets have been a thing in the US going back to the Revolution, on both sides of the aisle. It's often a reason why larger cities had multiple papers. One for each side.

reactordev• 2 years ago

Not to mention the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Doing the same thing with Radio and local TV.

korginator• 2 years ago

China and the erstwhile Soviet Union wrote the book on propaganda. India has nothing on them.

somenameforme4• 2 years ago

So I decided to take the really sophisticated step of doing a "link:www.milanomodaweekly.com" search on Google. It turned up this [1] page, and pretty much only that page. But that seems to explain what this probably is.

This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them with auto-translated Chinese newswire and blog stuff, local scraped stuff, etc. and then claims they're "major foreign media outlets", which they then sell access to for the riveting price of just 1.4 million won - about $1000. It looks like a modern take on something like a 419 scam, except I expect they probably do follow through on publishing whatever people submit!

Granted not as exciting a discovery as a shadowy influence operation with a super sexy nickname, but probably more accurate.

[1] https://kmong.com/gig/497744

imiric5• 2 years ago

Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents?

I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me.

It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people. It's common knowledge that the Chinese government has a history of censoring information that shows them in a bad light, promoting largely false self-aggrandizing narratives, and attacking anyone who challenges them. It shouldn't be surprising at all that the internet outside of their great firewall is a major focus of their operations. Given a lack of direct sources to determine the truth of the situation, I will always lean towards believing that this is part of their established modus operandi, rather than minimizing it by claiming it's just another "amateur hour scam operation".

somenameforme4• 2 years ago

What do you think Chinese news and blogs are full of?

dang3• 2 years ago

Please make your substantive points without swipes, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.

This is particularly important when the topic is divisive. That's in the guidelines too btw.

avgcorrection2• 2 years ago

Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents?

What does the irrelevant adjective “blatant” have to do with anything? And why is “ad hominem” significant when 95% of politics is about technically fallacious argumentation such as that?

Oh, a 10KUSD FB ad campaign bought by Kremlin and targeted at the US population? Obvious psyop, yes. Also completely irrelevant noise in the scheme of things, just like this apparent “amateur hour” operation.

It’s about having an appropriate response to “bad things”. There is no need to freak out about a few ants in the backyard.

It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people.

Of course. As “highly educated people” we are supposed to circle the wagons and irrationally blow apparent low-effort (again according to the OP) psyops out of proportion because it’s an enemy regime. That’s after all the primary ideological role of the “highly educated people” (loose source: Chomsky).

bombcar• 2 years ago

This is the key to many scams these days - you're not the person being scammed, you're a byproduct or accident.

E.g., all that pointless spam that doesn't even have a way to buy anything whatsoever? Spammers selling services to people who don't know what they're doing.

whoswho• 2 years ago

Is there a Chinese equivalent of HN (niche tech forum, not the Y combinator front)? How do we get access?

dvfjsdhgfv• 2 years ago

Putin's folks have been doing this for decades; I'm surprised China waited for so long.

wolverine8766• 2 years ago

The Internet is an absolute disaster; disinformation campaigns are everywhere, drowning people, with endless horrible consequences. Freedom, peace, prosperity, democracy, human rights, health, etc. are all at risk.

Why are we putting up with it? We really need a solution. At this point, I'd love a walled garden where I know I'd get quality information. It doesn't have to be perfect, but not misinformation or disinformation. I'd love a search engine that restricted itself to quality sources.

Even from a purely immediate self-interest perspective, why are all these intelligent people accepting such a trash product?

Mountain_Skies• 2 years ago

Who do you trust to provide that solution who is above using it to control narratives for their own benefit? And do you think they will forever be trustworthy and/or agree with your world view?

wolverine8766• 2 years ago

It's a theoretical problem, but it's a commonplace practical function. Everything you read was chosen and written by other people. There's no getting around it unless you are doing primary research. I'll have to choose carefully.

For example, if DuckDuckGo offered a 'quality sources' search, I'd pay for it. I don't want to search the entire Internet - that's madness if you think about it. Why are we doing that?

Dig1t• 2 years ago

misinformation is "false or inaccurate information"

Isn't this the same as asking for a source of information that is always correct? Has that ever actually existed in any form?

What about lying by omission?

It seems like we're all freaking out about something that has always been true: people lie, say half-truths, distort facts. It's pretty hard to convey only information that is 100% provably true and also tells a complete picture.

wolverine8766• 2 years ago

misinformation is "false or inaccurate information" / Isn't this the same as asking for a source of information that is always correct? Has that ever actually existed in any form?

That's really taking that definition (if that's the precise definition) to a theoretical extreme! And then you say your extreme is impossible. Yes, I agree!

Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

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