2020年9月22日星期二
Theweek:Frightening faith
2020年9月7日星期一
The Epoch Times is showing up in “specific neighborhoods” in an attempt to gain support for Trump in this important swing state and beyond
Misinformation in Your Mailbox: Rightwing Newspaper Tries to Sway Wisconsin
The Epoch Times is showing up in “specific neighborhoods” in an attempt to gain support for Trump in this important swing state and beyond.
by Michael Makowski
August 29, 2020
Residents living in the suburban Wisconsin town of Hartland recently found a copy of the rightwing weekly newspaper The Epoch Times in their mailbox. They aren’t alone in this. The paper is making a deliberate effort to reach and sway voters throughout the nation.
For many, The Epoch Times, which is tied to a Chinese spiritual movement known as Falun Gong, is an unknown paper. Its “sample edition” landing in mailboxes might seem like a benign offering, or perhaps even a mailing error.
The Epoch Times commitment to pro-Trump coverage has caught the eye of Trump supporters around the country—up to and including conservative elected officials, Trump associates, and the President himself.
But the newspaper’s spam campaign in Wisconsin is only the latest in a string of unsolicited sendings. Reports of The Epoch Times showing up in mailboxes are widespread, it has been documented in such places like Sacramento, Denver, and cities across Canada and the United Kingdom.
The Epoch Times reads like a traditional newspaper. It is unassuming, professionally designed, and focused on politics and lifestyle coverage. Behind the newspaper’s headlines, however, there is a specific agenda to spread anti-communist, and pro-Trump, messaging.
As an international and multi-language newspaper published in more than thirty countries, The Epoch Times originated in Atlanta, Georgia and is now based in New York. It serves as an outlet for the Falun Gong religious movement, whose followers have been persecuted in China. The paper regularly criticizes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Although Falun Gong describes itself as an apolitical “spiritual practice” that consists of “gentle exercises and meditation,” the movement has been viewed by the Chinese government as subversive and dangerous since its founding in the early 1990s.
Following Falun Gong’s anti-communist agenda, The Epoch Times regularly publishes stories attacking the CCP, often involving misinformation and conspiracy theories.
In its American variety, the paper’s anti-communist and anti-CCP bend manifests in a strong pro-Trump stance; considering him to be the strongest fighter against the CCP. For Falun Gong, which views itself as waging a divine battle against communism, Trump is their destined warrior.
One sample edition of The Epoch Times, sent to a Canadian neighborhood, questioned whether the CCP created COVID-19 as a biological weapon, arguing that it should be renamed the “CCP Virus.” A front-page story on a separate edition promotes the Trump-fueled “Spygate” conspiracy theory.
Last year, Facebook banned The Epoch Times from advertising on its platform, after it was found to violate Facebook’s ad policy by obscuring its identity in political ads that promoted Trump and pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Before that, it had been the second-largest spender on pro-Trump ads, behind only the Trump Campaign itself, dropping $1.5 million and putting out more than 11,000 ads.
After being banned from advertising on Facebook, The Epoch Times made a move to YouTube. The New York Times has reported that it has spent an estimated $1 million on YouTube ads. Its most popular YouTube ad has garnered more than 22 million views and decries the “mainstream media” and a “communist ideology” that has taken root in the United States.
“Don’t let communists win,” the ad concludes, with an appeal to subscribe to the channel and purchase a subscription to the paper. Further scrolling through its YouTube channel reveals numerous videos praising President Trump and, most recently, claiming that the CCP “loves Biden.”
The Epoch Times commitment to pro-Trump coverage has caught the eye of Trump supporters around the country—up to and including conservative elected officials, Trump associates, and the President himself. The paper has won the endorsements of media figure and former Trump assistant Sebastian Gorka and Republican Representative Paul Gosar. Both Gorka and Gosar write for The Epoch Times.
Securing its place in the conservative media universe, The Epoch Times was granted an interview with Lara Trump and, most recently, was given the opportunity to ask the President a question in the White House Press Briefing Room.
The same week The Epoch Times reporter asked Trump about Hong Kong, its sample edition landed in mailboxes in Hartland, Wisconsin.
Acentral strategy of The Epoch Times is to attack the “mainstream media” as dishonest and beholden to communists. This echoes Trump’s frequent claims about “fake news” and might explain the paper’s growth and rising popularity in rightwing circles.
In the sample edition sent to Wisconsin residents, a spread of endorsements and reader testimonials blankets the back page. One reader’s testimonial tells how her mother received a local paper for years, but canceled her subscription and subscribed to The Epoch Times after she noticed her local paper had become “more and more liberal, biased, and untruthful” after Trump’s election.
The Epoch Times did not respond to an email enquiry regarding how decisions about to whom and why it sent this particular sample edition, but in an email to CBS News regarding similar distribution in Canada, publisher Cindy Gu said it targets “specific neighborhoods.”
But what about these neighborhoods make them specific to targeting?
In Wisconsin, a critical swing state, it’s likely not a coincidence that issues of The Epoch Times wound up in Waukesha County. It’s not a stretch to say that the outcome of the presidential election in Waukesha—along with the two other conservative counties that surround Milwaukee—may well decide whether or not Trump is re-elected.
The Epoch Times, in its crusade against communism, understands this deep flaw in the American political system and, like the countless other disinformation campaigns that will bombard us before November 3, is making its bid to exploit that flaw.
Facebook Removes Another Misinformation Network Linked to Epoch Times
Facebook Removes Another Misinformation Network Linked to Epoch Times
The actions come after an investigation by Snopes into the digital network's fraudulent behavior.
- PUBLISHED 6 AUGUST 2020
Facebook on Aug. 6, 2020, announced the removal of hundreds of accounts, pages, groups and Instagram profiles linked to Epoch Media Group, a pro-Trump digital network laden with misinformation that was banned as of August 2019 from buying ads on Facebook.
Starting in October 2019, Snopes investigations revealed that an Epoch Times-linked publication named The BL (The Beauty of Life) used sock puppet networks to inauthentically amplify its content. In a Aug. 6, 2020, Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) Report, Facebook announced it had identified a company employed by The Epoch Times, The BL, and others, that supplied fake online personas. That company, Truthmedia, is now banned from Facebook:
We removed 303 Facebook accounts, 181 Pages, 44 Groups and 31 Instagram accounts. This network operated from many regions around the world including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Germany, the UK, Finland and France. It targeted primarily English and Chinese-speaking audiences globally and Vietnam. We found this activity as part of our internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior with some links to the network we removed in December 2019. Our investigation linked this network to Truthmedia, a digital media outlet, which is now banned from our platforms.
Truthmedia focused primarily on audiences in Vietnam as well as English-language and Chinese character-reading Facebook users around the world, a Facebook spokesperson told Snopes. The network had an audience of about 2 million followers. About 146,000 Facebook users joined groups associated with the network, while about 7,000 people followed one or more Truthmedia Instagram accounts, Facebook reported. (Facebook owns Instagram.)
Facebook stressed it focused on “behavior, not content” in its enforcement action. Posts from the Truthmedia network preserved by the digital media analyst firm Graphika show it mainly published anti-Chinese government propaganda and also pro-Trump content that was “focused more broadly on his political and personal character.
Such content presented Trump as China’s best hope against the Chinese Communist Party and praised his foreign policies toward Beijing” — themes consistent with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is responsible for these media outlets.
Following Snopes’ investigation in the fall and winter of 2019, Facebook in December 2019 removed “610 accounts, 89 Facebook Pages, 156 Groups and 72 Instagram accounts” primarily associated with The BL network, a network linked to The Epoch Times that had attempted to hide its ties. However, Snopes demonstrated overlaps between The BL and The Epoch Times in personnel and in infrastructure.
Facebook removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to conservative media outlet The Epoch Times
Facebook removes troll farm posing as African-American support for Donald Trump
Facebook also removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to conservative media outlet The Epoch Times.
Aug. 7, 2020, 1:58 AM CST
By Ben Collins and Kevin Collier
Facebook removed hundreds of accounts on Thursday from a foreign troll farm posing as African-Americans in support of Donald Trump and QAnon supporters. It also removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to conservative media outlet The Epoch Times that pushed pro-Trump conspiracy theories about coronavirus and protests in the U.S.
Facebook took down the accounts as part of its enforcement against coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is the use of fake accounts to inflate the reach of content or products on social media.
The foreign pro-Trump troll farm was based in Romania and pushed content on Instagram under names like “BlackPeopleVoteForTrump” and on Facebook under “We Love Our President.”
Troll farms — groups of people that work together to manipulate internet discourse with fake accounts — are often outsourced and purchased by foreign governments or businesses to push specific political talking points. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, said the troll farm’s motivations were unclear, but they didn’t see “clear evidence of financial motivation” or “clear links to known commercial actors in this space.”
Facebook stressed that the takedowns were based on “behavior, not content,” like breaking rules against creating fake accounts to boost engagement on some pieces of content.
Researchers at the Atlantic Council found that many of the troll farm's posts came from a persona called "David Adrian," which used a stolen profile photo and claimed to be living in both Romania and Montana. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have since removed multiple accounts for the David Adrian persona.
A separate troll operation, tied to pro-Trump media organization Epoch Media Group, featured 303 Facebook accounts, 181 pages, 44 Facebook groups and 31 Instagram accounts, which were followed by more than 2 million people across both services. Epoch Media Group is the parent company of the newspaper The Epoch Times. The accounts were tied to a digital media outlet called TruthMedia, which Facebook says it has banned from its services.
The accounts posted about “ongoing U.S. protests and conspiracy theories about who is behind them,” Gleicher said. Some accounts pushed health misinformation about COVID-19, which led to their ban from their services before this month’s takedown.
Stephen Gregory, publisher of The Epoch Times' english-language editions, denied that the company was associated with TruthMedia.
"The Epoch Times and Epoch Media Group are not in any way linked or related with 'Truth Media,' nor do we have any involvement in any operation of 'Truth Media,'" he said in an email.
The same network appears to have created a still-active White House petition to “start calling the novel coronavirus the CCP virus,” according to an investigation from Graphika, which tracks disinformation on social media.
Facebook has twice taken action against Epoch Times-related content, most recently for its use of AI-generated, deepfake-style profile pictures on fake accounts that pushed Epoch Times stories and talking points. Gleicher said that the news Epoch Media Group-related fake accounts primarily used stock photos and not AI-generated photos for profile pictures.
Facebook banned The Epoch Times from advertising on its platform last year after it purchased ads under account names like “Honest Paper” and “Pure Honest Journalism” to get around the social network’s ad review systems. At the time, The Epoch Times was the largest buyer of pro-Trump ads on Facebook outside of the Trump campaign.
An example of the new Epoch Media-related takedown provided by Facebook showed an account called “Truth14” pushing a meme about a baseball player who didn’t kneel during the national anthem, part of the accounts’ strategy to push pro-Trump culture war messaging.“This guy is going to need a lot of support because the mob is coming for him and his family,” the post reads. “‘MLB’ is ‘BLM’ spelled
backwards.”
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