https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/17/guo-wengui-disinformation-steve-bannon/

A sprawling online network tied to Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has become a potent platform for disinformation in the United States, attacking the safety of coronavirus vaccines, promoting false election-fraud claims and spreading baseless QAnon conspiracies, according to research published Monday by the network analysis company Graphika.

The report, provided in advance to The Washington Post, details a network that Graphika says amplifies the views of Guo, a Chinese real estate developer whose association with former Trump White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon became a focus of news coverage last year after Bannon was arrested aboard Guo’s yacht on federal fraud charges.

Graphika said the network includes media websites such as GTV, for which Guo last year publicly said he was raising funds, along with thousands of social media accounts that Graphika said amplify content in a coordinated fashion. The network also includes more than a dozen local-action groups over which Guo has publicly claimed an oversight role, Graphika found.

Graphika’s research sheds more light on Guo, a onetime billionaire real estate developer who, in addition to his relationship with Bannon, has drawn attention for the confusing mix of disinformation and invective he has broadcast since moving to the United States, including contradictory attacks on both the Chinese Communist Party and anti-CCP dissidents in the West.

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Walleye

(31,069 posts)

13. There ya go. Every accusation a confession

Reply to Celerity (Reply #12)

Sat Mar 11, 2023, 12:00 PM

Mar 2023

Celerity

(43,583 posts)

15. GTV Media Group

Reply to Walleye (Reply #13)

Sat Mar 11, 2023, 12:09 PM

Mar 2023

GTV Media Group, Inc. is a media company formed in April 2020 by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui. The company operates GTV, a Chinese media platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTV_Media_Group

Background

Prior to forming GTV, Steve Bannon served as an executive of Breitbart News and an advisor to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, is a Chinese billionaire fugitive.[6][7] Guo paid Bannon $1 million for consulting services related to G News from August 2018 to August 2019.

History

GTV Media Group, Inc. was founded in New York on April 20, 2020. In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that GTV Media was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to more than $300 million in private equity funding. Some investors had requested refunds after GTV Media failed to produce official documents validating their investments. Bank accounts of the company were frozen by Wells Fargo and Chase Bank, and a Bank of America account of GTV Media's parent company was closed.

The organization also attracted attention in August following the federal grand jury indictment of Bannon, Brian Kolfage, and several of their associates on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the We Build the Wall fundraising project. Guo responded that the charges were "fabricated" and claimed that they were part of a plan by the Chinese Communist Party to "take Mr. Bannon down".

Like other entities under Guo and Bannon, this organization has also participated in the spread of in the spread of non verified information and conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden as well as misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2021, GTV settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations that it participated in the illegal sale of shares and digital securities called G-Coins or G-Dollars. In the settlement, the firms paid more than $539 million.

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hlthe2b

(102,413 posts)

4. well, ignoring the grotesque creitin Bannon for the moment, I'm loving all this blowback on Musk

Reply to FelineOverlord (Original post)

Sat Mar 11, 2023, 11:17 AM

Mar 2023

And yeah, it does prove he's pretty damned stupid--at least about people, politics, and "crowd behavior" to think that his sidling up to the worst of the worst--MAGATs, racists, homophobes, misogynists, authoritarians, fascists, NAZIs, ANTI-SCIENCE propagandists, and the rest would somehow "inure" him from intra-faction backlash.

Bannon is just one big and hate-inciter. Musk is in some ways worse.

Walleye

(31,069 posts)

14. I think musk is just indulging his true feelings, and he can afford it

Reply to hlthe2b (Reply #4)

Sat Mar 11, 2023, 12:01 PM

Mar 2023

Hortensis

(58,785 posts)

19. That's my general impression -- in a man with both great

Reply to Walleye (Reply #14)

Sat Mar 11, 2023, 01:20 PM

Mar 2023

personal assets and great flaws.

"The Donald" tRump illustrates how insulated even a mentally disordered sometimes-"billionaire" can be from managing to destroy himself, and Musk is/was "the world's richest man." He has lots of room to act it all out.

Maybe he's a "thrill-seeker" on top of everything else and now feels freer than ever to indulge. Or disinhibition unleashed got out of control.

...sensation seeking is the need for “varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences”. Traditionally, sensation seeking is conceptualized as having four distinct components: experience seeking, thrill and adventure seeking, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility.