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Twitter Deletes Over 170,000 Accounts Tied to Chinese Propaganda Efforts

posted by martyb on Saturday June 13 2020, @11:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the network-analysis dept.

takyon writes:

Twitter deletes over 170,000 accounts tied to Chinese propaganda efforts

Twitter announced Thursday that it had deleted more than 170,000 accounts tied to a Chinese state-linked operation that were spreading deceptive information around the COVID-19 virus, political dynamics in Hong Kong, and other issues.

Almost 25,000 of the accounts that were deleted formed what Twitter described as the "core network," while around 150,000 accounts were amplifying messages from the core groups.

"In general, this entire network was involved in a range of manipulative and coordinated activities," the company wrote in a blog post. "They were Tweeting predominantly in Chinese languages and spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China (CCP), while continuing to push deceptive narratives about the political dynamics in Hong Kong."

Also at CNBC.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:01PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:01PM (#1007528)

    Read the blog post. Nearly all of the accounts they they banned had few to no followers and little to no engagement. What a sophisticated state actor! Twitter has become so awesome, they can even detect and enforce precrime! *swooon* Now if they could only solve an unimaginably difficult problem like the people spamming the exact same crypto scams each type Elon Musk makes a new post. That's a really hard problem to solve, apparently. But taking on government actors, even before they've acted!? No problem for Twitter!

    China has much better ways to spend their resources than spamming Twitter. Registering, maintaining, and operating hundreds of thousands of accounts to post in Chinese on a site almost no Chinese use and of those that do (and are not already full on board with the state position) probably couldn't care less? Come on. This is just Twitter enforcing the US Establishment narrative and censoring anybody who disagrees and then claiming they're state actors. China is a country of 1.4 billion and the vast majority of them tend to be supportive of the state. A million people in a nation that large is hundreths of a single percent of their population. It's people expressing their views on the foreigner website, and then getting censored and called government agents. Probably akin to what would happen if you tried to register on Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter) and started ranting and raving about democracy for Hong Kong - you secret US State Actor you.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:20PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:20PM (#1007537) Journal

    Read the blog post. Nearly all of the accounts they they banned had few to no followers and little to no engagement. What a sophisticated state actor! Twitter has become so awesome, they can even detect and enforce precrime! *swooon*

    "Nearly all". So right there we don't have "precrime". And there are plenty of ways to connect accounts even when they are low activity.

    China has much better ways to spend their resources than spamming Twitter. Registering, maintaining, and operating hundreds of thousands of accounts to post in Chinese on a site almost no Chinese use and of those that do (and are not already full on board with the state position) probably couldn't care less?

    How much resources does that cost? Sounds like it was almost purely automated, which means it wouldn't cost that much.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:23PM (#1007557)

    Probably akin to what would happen if you tried to register on Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter) and started ranting and raving about democracy for Seattle - you secret US State Actor you.

    FTFY.