Google LLC’s Threat Analysis Group today shared insights into how it is taking on prolific influence operation actor DRAGONBRIDGE, a “spammy influence network” allegedly linked to China with a presence across multiple platforms.

DRAGONBRIDGE, also known as “Spamouflage Dragon,” was first highlighted by Google TAG in January 2023. The group is known for producing a high volume of low-quality content across multiple platforms, but despite its extensive efforts, it struggles to achieve significant engagement from authentic users.

The group’s activities include spreading pro-People’s Republic of China narratives on various current events and criticizing the U.S., with content primarily targeting Chinese speakers but also appearing in English and other languages.

In 2023, Google managed to disrupt more than 65,000 instances of DRAGONBRIDGE activity across YouTube and Blogger — the latter apparently still exists — reflecting Google’s continued focus on taking on the influence operation and its success in scaling detection efforts across Google products.

In the first quarter of 2024, Google disrupted more than 10,000 instances of DRAGONBRIDGE activity across YouTube and Blogger. The total number of instances of DRAGONBRIDGE activity disrupted by Google has now surpassed 175,000.

Though DRAGONBRIDGE is prolific, Google TAG argues that the influence operation has “practically no organic engagement from users.” Through 2023, of the more than 57,000 YouTube channels linked to DRAGONBRIDGE that were disabled, 80% had zero subscribers. Of the more than 900,000 videos suspended, over 65% had fewer than 100 views and 30% had zero views.

Where DRAGONBRIDGE content did receive engagement, Google TAG found that the engagement was almost entirely inauthentic, coming from other DRAGONBRIDGE accounts and not from authentic users. Comment activity was also mostly from other DRAGONBRIDGE accounts.

A typical DRAGONBRIDGE video features robotic voiceovers, stock footage and publicly available images. The videos are noted as including voiceovers and text overlays with awkward phrasings suggestive of machine translation.

In a recent campaign targeting the Taiwan general election in January, DRAGONBRIDGE posted thousands of videos and comments on YouTube using synthetic audio and avatars to promote a false “secret history” document critical of outgoing Chinese President Tsai Ing-wen. The campaign had limited reach, with practically no engagement from organic users and YouTube terminated channels tied to the activity.

Other DRAGONBRIDGE content includes U.S.-focused narratives that are said to portray government, society and democracy in a negative light, cycling through political and social narratives that evolve with the headlines.

“Despite their failure to gain traction with an authentic audience, DRAGONBRIDGE generates high volumes of content across multiple social media platforms, is persistent and continues to experiment in their tactics and techniques,” the report concludes. “That is why Google has scaled our efforts in recent years to disrupt DRAGONBRIDGE coordinated inauthentic activity on our platforms.”

Image: DRAGONBRIDGE/Google