Late at night, “Moreless” puts child to bed, switches keyboard to Chinese, and begins another round of digital detective work.
Tonight’s keyword: “拒绝国王” (“No Kings”), a reference to a day of nationwide protests against President Donald Trump on June 14, 2025. Earlier in the day, Moreless had screenshotted a few suspicious posts on X from accounts that appeared to be Chinese “current affairs” influencers — one suggesting a Walmart heiress was funding the protests, another pointing fingers at a billionaire in Shanghai. Now, they were digging deeper.
This is Moreless’ fifth year as a freelance fact-checker. They asked to use a pseudonym due to concerns about retaliation. “Moreless” is the name of their Chinese-language fact-check blog, which has garnered over 2,500 followers. By day, they work as a cybersecurity engineer, seldom talking politics with coworkers. Few colleagues know that at night, Moreless tracks viral misinformation across platforms.
The Walmart heiress rumor they had seen earlier was already gaining traction on Chinese-language platforms. Through searches, Moreless traced its origin to several apparently U.S.-based X accounts active in political commentary, which had posted images of an advertisement in The New York Times promoting the “No Kings” protest. At the bottom, the ad read, “Paid for by Christy Walton,” the daughter-in-law of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
The image was translated into Chinese and reposted by Chinese political commentary accounts on X. As it circulated, the content drifted further out of context. One article on WeChat claimed, “Walmart heiress behind America’s largest protest.” In the public group chats that Moreless follows, some were already calling the protesters “paid American actors.”
This kind of misinformation flow has become increasingly well oiled since the start of the 2024 U.S. presidential election season, creating a pipeline between English- and Chinese-language audiences in the U.S.
