Searching about Fort Detrick? You’ll likely find Chinese propaganda, an ASD study finds.

Chinese government officials and state media are exploiting gaps in search results on powerful engines like Google, YouTube and Bing to advance conspiracy theories about the origins of covid-19, according to a new report shared exclusively with The Technology 202. 

In particular, they have fixated on amplifying stories that boost the baseless theory that the coronavirus was created out of a lab at Fort Detrick, a military base in Maryland that’s been at the center of numerous viral hoaxes over the years. 
 
Chinese state media and officials have posted over 1,000 tweets, articles and videos about Fort Detrick since May, in doing so “flooding social media platforms with elaborate conspiracy theories that have been thoroughly debunked,” according to a report released Tuesday by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD).

The Washington Post

Read the Article