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.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:23PM (5 children)
Postings about the dangerous antifa movement in the Chinese city of Hong Kong, and the exceptional efforts of the CPC to control American-developed coronavirus, should not be censored (including down-mods).
取一隻穿山甲和油炸
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:26PM
Amplify parent comment! It is truth!
習主席喜歡蜂蜜
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:28PM (1 child)
Increase loudness of this posting! Author is filled with wisdom.
#黑人的命也是命
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @03:22PM
Word!
#屌你老母
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @04:50PM (1 child)
Did the 50 cent army get a raise?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @11:36PM
You just need to learn Chinese
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:57PM
I am running out of facepalms today. How's the Seattle going?
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @01:04PM
george orwell called. he wants his 1984 accounts back ...
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday June 13 2020, @06:20PM (3 children)
It seems like this would be a great body of data to analyze how a primary state actor tries to manipulate perception at scale.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:01PM (2 children)
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.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:20PM
"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.
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
FTFY.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday June 14 2020, @08:16AM
An alternate way to fix this problem for yourself is to open your "hosts" file and add the line:
127.0.0.1 twitter.com