Google Removes 18,500 YouTube Channels for Influence Ops: Russia/China Prominent

Google’s Threat Analy­sis Group ter­mi­nat­ed 18,532 YouTube chan­nels dur­ing Q3 2025 as part of coor­di­nat­ed influ­ence oper­a­tions inves­ti­ga­tions. On 13 Novem­ber 2025, PPC Land report­ed that TAG removed chan­nels span­ning nine coun­tries, with Rus­sia account­ing for the major­i­ty, and Chi­nese oper­a­tions remov­ing 11,506 chan­nels across July through Sep­tem­ber. The arti­cle begins:

Google’s Threat Analy­sis Group ter­mi­nat­ed 18,532 YouTube chan­nels dur­ing the third quar­ter of 2025 as part of inves­ti­ga­tions into coor­di­nat­ed influ­ence oper­a­tions span­ning nine coun­tries, accord­ing to a bul­letin pub­lished Novem­ber 13, 2025. The enforce­ment actions doc­u­ment­ed in the TAG Bul­letin: Q3 2025 rep­re­sent the lat­est phase in ongo­ing efforts to dis­rupt coor­di­nat­ed inau­then­tic behav­ior across Google plat­forms. Rus­sia account­ed for the major­i­ty of ter­mi­nat­ed chan­nels, with Chi­nese oper­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing the sec­ond-largest vol­ume of enforce­ment actions dur­ing the July through Sep­tem­ber period.

Read more: https://ppc.land/google-terminates-over-18–500-channels-in-q3-2025-influence-operations/

Key Points

• Chi­nese-linked oper­a­tions result­ed in the ter­mi­na­tion of 11,506 YouTube chan­nels across Q3 2025, with 2,497 in July, 2,533 in August, and 6,484 in Sep­tem­ber, upload­ing con­tent in Chi­nese and Eng­lish about Chi­na and US for­eign affairs, sub­stan­tial­ly exceed­ing the pre­vi­ous quar­ter’s 1,545 month­ly terminations.
• Rus­sia account­ed for the major­i­ty of ter­mi­nat­ed chan­nels, with TAG iden­ti­fy­ing mul­ti­ple cam­paigns linked to Russ­ian con­sult­ing firms pro­vid­ing coor­di­nat­ed influ­ence ser­vices, includ­ing the largest sin­gle action, remov­ing 382 chan­nels, and a Sep­tem­ber oper­a­tion involv­ing 3,269 channels.
• Moldo­va emerged as a sig­nif­i­cant geo­graph­ic focus with TAG ter­mi­nat­ing 742 YouTube chan­nels in August and Sep­tem­ber, shar­ing con­tent in Roman­ian and Russ­ian, crit­i­ciz­ing the Moldovan gov­ern­ment across eight sep­a­rate enforce­ment actions that also tar­get­ed NATO and the Euro­pean Union.
• TAG blocked 109 domains from Google News and Dis­cov­er sur­faces dur­ing Q3 2025, with Roma­nia account­ing for 66 blocked domains as part of inves­ti­ga­tions into oper­a­tions shar­ing con­tent crit­i­cal of the Moldovan gov­ern­ment, local polit­i­cal par­ties, and the EU.

YouTube and Influence Operations: How State Actors Exploit the Platform for Propaganda Campaigns

YouTube has become a cen­tral bat­tle­ground for state-spon­sored influ­ence oper­a­tions, with gov­ern­ments deploy­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns that exploit the plat­for­m’s glob­al reach and algo­rith­mic ampli­fi­ca­tion. Google ter­mi­nat­ed 15,876 YouTube chan­nels in Q1 2025 as part of ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into Chi­nese-orig­i­nat­ed influ­ence oper­a­tions, bring­ing the total removed since 2022 to over 130,000 Chi­na-linked chan­nels. These oper­a­tions cre­ate seem­ing­ly legit­i­mate news chan­nels that embed pro-Chi­na mes­sag­ing with­in reg­u­lar con­tent to sub­tly shift view­er opin­ions, with many using AI-gen­er­at­ed voiceovers and stock imagery to appear authen­tic while pro­mot­ing pro-Chi­na and anti-US nar­ra­tives to Eng­lish-speak­ing audiences.

The Aus­tralian Strate­gic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute uncov­ered Oper­a­tion Shad­ow Play, a net­work of approx­i­mate­ly 30 YouTube chan­nels with 730,000 sub­scribers that col­lec­tive­ly post­ed 4,500 videos, gar­ner­ing 120 mil­lion views. This oper­a­tion exploit­ed YouTube’s algo­rithm to enhance vis­i­bil­i­ty and employed gen­er­a­tive AI tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing syn­thet­ic avatars and coor­di­nat­ed post­ing sched­ules. Beyond Chi­nese oper­a­tions, Bei­jing uses pri­vate mar­ket­ing agen­cies to hire Eng­lish-speak­ing YouTube influ­encers, offer­ing cash pay­ments to pro­mote pre-made videos spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion, includ­ing mis­lead­ing claims about Covid-19 ori­gins designed to deflect from Chi­nese responsibility.

Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions have sim­i­lar­ly exploit­ed YouTube’s reach despite plat­form restric­tions. RT evad­ed YouTube’s glob­al ban by rebrand­ing con­tent under the name Dig Deep Doc­u­men­tary, remov­ing RT water­marks while repub­lish­ing the same pro­pa­gan­da mate­ri­als with ver­i­fied RT Face­book accounts pro­mot­ing the chan­nel. Indi­vid­ual pro­pa­gan­dists have thrived dur­ing con­flicts, with for­mer US naval intel­li­gence offi­cer Patrick Lan­cast­er’s sub­scriber count surg­ing from 50,000 to over 500,000 since Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine by spread­ing pro-Krem­lin dis­in­for­ma­tion about the con­flict. YouTube blocked near­ly 500 pro-Russ­ian chan­nels with over 15 mil­lion sub­scribers at Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence’s request, yet the plat­for­m’s enforce­ment remains incon­sis­tent across dif­fer­ent state actors and pro­pa­gan­da networks.

Exter­nal References:

• An AI-dri­ven influ­ence oper­a­tion is spread­ing pro-Chi­na pro­pa­gan­da across YouTube
• YouTube wipes out thou­sands of pro­pa­gan­da chan­nels linked to Chi­na, Rus­sia, others
• YouTube Promised to Label State-Spon­sored Videos But Does­n’t Always Do So

Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.