Google announced it has removed nearly 11,000 YouTube channels and other accounts that were part of state-backed propaganda campaigns from China, Russia, and other nations. The takedowns, which occurred in the second quarter of the year, are part of the company’s ongoing effort to combat disinformation on its platforms.
The vast majority of the removed accounts—over 7,700 YouTube channels—were linked to China. According to Google, these channels primarily pushed content in Chinese and English that promoted the Chinese government, praised President Xi Jinping, and commented on U.S. foreign policy.
Another 2,000 channels were tied to Russia. These accounts posted content in multiple languages that supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while criticizing Ukraine, NATO, and the West. The report also detailed a specific operation involving RT, the Russian state-controlled media outlet, which was accused of paying prominent conservative American influencers to create social media content.
This massive cleanup is part of the regular work done by Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which hunts for these “coordinated influence” operations. The takedowns weren’t limited to just China and Russia. The report also detailed the removal of campaigns linked to Iran, Israel, Turkey, and other countries that were targeting political rivals or pushing specific narratives on geopolitical conflicts.
While the number is large, it’s actually a drop from the first quarter, when Google took down over 23,000 similar accounts. This move comes as other tech giants also increase their efforts to combat inauthentic behavior online. Just last week, Meta announced it had removed about 10 million profiles for impersonation and spam.
