Google removes nearly 11,000 YouTube channels tied to influence campaigns by the PRC and Russia

Google’s latest Threat Analysis Group (TAG) report shows that 10,900+ YouTube channels were removed between April and June 2025 for coordinated influence operations. More than two-thirds of the accounts (about 7,700) were traced to networks aligned with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The Chinese clusters uploaded material in both English and Chinese that praised Beijing’s policies, voiced support for President Xi Jinping, and criticized the Philippines and US foreign affairs. Google’s takedowns underline a continuing pattern: large-scale, low-engagement channels that recycle short-form video clips to seed partisan talking points across the platform.

Russian-linked operations accounted for just over 2,000 removed channels. These networks produced multilingual content supporting Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and attacking NATO and Western governments. In May, a separate subset tied to the state broadcaster RT lost 20 channels, four Ads accounts, and a Blogger site.

Monthly data illustrate the scale of the campaigns. PRC-aligned networks lost 1,545 channels in April, 3,592 in May, and 2,598 in June. Russia-linked actors saw 1,045 channels terminated in April, 507 in May, 392 in June, and several blocked domains.

TAG also reported smaller takedowns covering campaigns favoring Iran, Azerbaijan, Israel, Romania, Ghana, and Turkey’s Victory Party. While numerically minor, these networks follow the same playbook of multi-language dissemination designed to bypass automated defenses.

Google continues to block advertising in Russia and has faced fines of around two undecillion rubles (about $20 decillion) imposed by Russian authorities, along with service bans, for refusing to reinstate sanctioned propaganda outlets. The company will maintain “defense-in-depth” measures, combining account-level disruption with ongoing machine-learning detection, to curb future state-backed influence operations.