China’s Porn Spam Campaign Fuels Digital Authoritarianism: Experts

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Beijing is aggressively expanding its digital authoritarianism by flooding social media with pornography to hide internal turmoil, say experts, a strategy that threatens global internet liberty and sets a dangerous precedent for other regimes, they warn.

Nikita Bier, the head of product for X, said in a Jan. 30 post that the Chinese government floods X search results “with porn whenever there is political unrest” in a bid to block citizens from accessing live information.

Bier also said the spam campaign originated from “5 million to 10 million accounts” that had been created on the site before he suspended new user registrations.

“Rumors escalate quickly in such a closed environment, so the regime has to resort to letting its cyber army post pornography as a diversion because it cannot leak other details to mask the political purge,” Shen told The Epoch Times.

Frank Tian Xie, John M. Olin Palmetto chair professor in business and professor of marketing at the University of South Carolina Aiken, said the massive scale of this spam operation suggests it’s part of a recurring state-sanctioned maneuver designed to distract the public.

“This is actually a long-standing trick of the CCP as the party orchestrated the Shen Chong case in the 1940s to drive a wedge between the Kuomintang and the U.S. military,” Xie told The Epoch Times.

“Its true intent now is merely to mask what is happening in China, namely the power struggle between military heavyweights and the political leadership.”

Xie referred to the 1946 “Shen Chong incident” as a historical precedent for such deception, noting that the CCP incited nationwide student protests over a fabricated rape accusation involving American soldiers.

This scheme was orchestrated by supporters of communism specifically to destabilize the then-ruling Kuomintang government in China.

Xie said this also indicates Beijing is deeply worried that the public might rise up or organize political protests before the dust settles on the internal infighting within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

“While ordinary citizens inside China may not see the full picture, Beijing is engaging in such brazen behavior on global social media due to the PLA infighting, which will only serve to trample upon whatever remaining trust the world has in the CCP,” Xie said.

Antonio Graceffo, a national security analyst and Epoch Times contributor, said this flagrant censorship tactic could finally compel voters to pressure leaders in countries that are still pursuing closer engagement with Beijing.

“There could be Chinese people that are ‘digital sleeper cells’ as well that could be activated to spam porn or anything,” Graceffo said.

He said this is part of Beijing’s broader strategy to manipulate the news cycle by fabricating inflammatory narratives to sow discord since the regime cannot directly control the narrative on open platforms.

“That whole story may be put there by China and then amplified by Chinese accounts because it fits a certain narrative to make people angry,” Graceffo said.

According to Shen, China’s digital authoritarianism naturally produces a chilling effect that discourages external criticism of its human rights issues while allowing the regime to aggressively penetrate the global information space.

“This approach acts as a tool to restrict information on internet freedom, divert focus from international news, or reshape China’s image while specifically suppressing the speech of a minority of people, which has a major impact on global internet liberty,” Shen said.

Shen cautioned that the success of these suppression tactics creates a dangerous precedent that could encourage other regimes to adopt Beijing’s technology.

“These methods allow Beijing to achieve its goal of attacking speech, which may lead other dictatorships or authoritarian states to emulate this model and accept CCP technology to form a detrimental trend,” Shen said.

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