B.C. man alleges he was targeted by China’s ‘spamouflage’ campaign

Global Affairs describes spamouflage, a combination of spam and camouflage, as a network of new or hijacked social media accounts that are used to post propaganda messages.

The YouTube video appears to show a person who looks like Liu Xin making unfounded remarks about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying among other things that “he is a man who loves porn.”

But Liu, 60, a prominent online critic of China’s government who lives in Burnaby, B.C., says he didn’t say anything of the sort.

The video is a deepfake creation according to Liu and an Australian security think-tank that analyzed it, and is part of an extensive “spamouflage” campaign that Global Affairs Canada believes is connected to China.

The video and others making accusations of “criminal and ethical violations” by Canadian politicians were posted on the social media accounts of MPs across the political spectrum, Global Affairs says, including Trudeau and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.

But Liu says it was he, and not the maligned politicians, who was China’s main target in the campaign, which Global Affairs says involved a bot network posting thousands of comments and links to the fake videos.

“Their attack on me is extremely malicious and these fake videos have been taking an emotional toll on me,” says Liu, who runs a Chinese-language YouTube channel with 164,000 subscribers under the name “Lao Deng.” He also has more than 300,000 followers on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Liu says he suspects the primary goal of the campaign was to undermine him in the eyes of the public and Canadian politicians.

“If Mr. Trudeau is standing in front of me, I want to tell him: this isn’t me. Both of us are victims of a spamouflage campaign deployed by the Chinese government,” Liu says in an interview conducted in Mandarin, adding that he has been “under tremendous pressure” as a result.