Twitter suspended a core network of 23,750 very active accounts.
SAN FRANCISCO:
On Thursday, Twitter said it had deleted more than 170,000 accounts linked to a Beijing-supported influence campaign that deceptively disseminated messages favorable to the Chinese government, including some on the coronavirus.
The company suspended a core network of 23,750 very active accounts, as well as a larger network of approximately 150,000 “boosting” accounts used to increase the content of the main accounts.
Twitter, as well as researchers who analyzed the accounts, said the network was largely an echo chamber of fake accounts without much traction. Twitter is blocked in China, along with other social media companies such as Facebook and Instagram.
The company also cut two small state-supported operations it allocated to Russia and Turkey, both targeting national audiences.
Twitter said the Chinese network had ties to a previous state-funded operation, dismantled last year by Google’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which had pushed misleading accounts of the political dynamics in Hong Kong.
The new operation also focused heavily on Hong Kong, but also promoted messages on the coronavirus pandemic, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and Taiwan, the researchers said.
Renee DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory said that network coronavirus activity had increased in late January, as the epidemic spread beyond China and increased in March.
Accounts praised China’s response to the virus, while using the pandemic to thwart American and Hong Kong activists, she said.
Open-source researchers from Graphika and Bellingcat previously reported the re-emergence of the so-called “Spamouflage Dragon” network after it became inactive following corporate demolitions last summer.
The US State Department said in May that it had found a network of non-authentic Twitter accounts with “very likely” links to China spreading false allegations of coronavirus.
Twitter rejected claims at the time, claiming that the 5,000 accounts identified by the agency included non-governmental organizations and legitimate journalists.
A Twitter spokesperson said Thursday that the network he had removed was not related to what the State Department had identified. In Beijing, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said there was a need for Chinese voices with objective opinions, as many platforms carried lies about China.
“China is the biggest victim of misinformation,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a media availability.
“I think if Twitter wants to do something to its credit, then really the accounts that should be closed are precisely the ones that organize and coordinate to attack and smear China.” Over the past year, Chinese diplomatic missions and diplomats, including Hua, have created Twitter or Facebook accounts, often using them to attack critics from Beijing.
Twitter posted a tweet written in March by a Chinese government spokesperson last month suggesting that the US military has introduced the new coronavirus in China as the social media platform expedites fact-checking publications. .
