The Epoch Times

The Epoch Times, started in 2000 by a group of Chinese-Americans affiliated with the religious group Falun Gong, has in recent years ridden the wave of conservative, pro-Trump social media popularity to build a large social media following. On its website, it advances conspiracy content such as anti-vaccination theories, while its YouTube channels promote the pro-Trump fringe movement QAnon and other topics. The Epoch Times’s official Facebook accounts were banned by the social network in July 2019. The Epoch Times was apparently able to sidestep those rules before being caught. The tactic mirrors that used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency to launder disinformation across social movements by creating impostor pages. The Epoch Times spent around $2 million on Facebook ads, NBC News said, many of them pro-Trump. Facebook declined to comment on the publication’s amount of spending on its platform.