Last month, the New York Times ran a story about YouTube videos promoting tourism to China and promoting messages sympathetic to the Chinese government. The accounts are a part of a broader network of profiles on Twitter, YouTube and other social media, spreading pro-Beijing narratives. To talk through the story and what to make of the accounts, Jacob Schulz sat down with one of the story's authors, Paul Mozur, a reporter at the New York Times, and Darren Linvill, an associate professor at the University of Clemson. They talked through who exactly these accounts are, what messages they promote and how to think about what impact they're having.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Darren Linvill, a leading expert on state-sponsored hacking, dives into the alarming shift from traditional espionage to targeting individuals through social media. He discusses how state actors exploit algorithms to incite chaos and misinformation, transforming everyday users into unwitting participants in these tactics. Darren unveils the operations of troll farms and their evolution, highlights the vulnerability of different generations to fake news, and emphasizes the urgent need for transparency in algorithmic systems to combat this global challenge.