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By Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu
Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese publisher who now lives in exile in the suburbs of Philadelphia, criticizes China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s reaction has been harsh lately, with crude and disturbing attacks online.
A secret propaganda network related to the country’s security bombarded not only Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at Clemson University and owner of Facebook and Instagram’s MetaArray.
The content, posted by users with false identities, gave the impression of being responded to M. Deng’s messages on X, the social platform, as well as on the accounts of public schools in her community, where the 16-year-old woman falsely represented herself as a drug addict, arsonist and prostitute.
“I tried to delete those posts,” Deng said of the online attacks, speaking in Mandarin Chinese in an interview, “but I didn’t succeed, because today what they’re looking for is deleting them and they just replace accounts to get out. “attack text and language.
Vulgar comments directed at the woman also appeared on Facebook pages and even on sites like TripAdvisor; Patch, a network data platform; and Niche, an online site that is helping parent schools, according to researchers.
The harassment is part of a trend of online harassment that has raised alarm bells in Washington, as well as in Canada and other countries where China’s attacks are increasingly brazen. The crusade included thousands of posts that researchers connected to a network of social media accounts. known as Spamouflage or Dragonbridge, a branch of the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.
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