Domains Clustered via Infrastructure Overlap
Within the domains shared by the pages, two primary clusters of domains could be identified via
shared infrastructure, analytics codes, and hosting providers. Other domains did not immediately
share any tangible connection to these two groups (referred to below as Group A and Group B).
Generally the domains used domain anonymization services for registration, and common
hosting providers.
Group A was the largest set of domains, centered around a small registration company and
hosting provider; 31 domains were confirmed to be within this cluster. Seventeen of these
domains shared the same IP address, and 14 used the same registrar.
Group B consisted of 17 domains; these tended to use large scale hosting providers such as
GoDaddy. These domains were shown to be linked via overlapping Google Analytics accounts.
Top 10 domain shwewiki.com was in this cluster. Among the other domains, there were a few
that shared some details with the Group clusters but at a low level of confidence.
These multiple and distinct clusters support the hypothesis that multiple operators were
responsible for the domains, instead of a single operator coordinating the effort.
Topics
The majority of the pages focused on celebrity-related news and, more recently, Covid-19-related
content -- always with clickbait-style titles and imagery. More rarely, the pages mixed in
pseudo-health content, as well as political, pro-Buddhist, pro-Government and pro-military links.
Celebrities and Clickbait Content
The pages posted a variety of content about local celebrities, covering life events such as
disputes between celebrities staged on social media platforms or on TV. Overall, celebrity content
was the most common type they shared: many of the pages featured “cele” or “celeb” in their
names, indicating their primary focus.
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