(Newswire.net — August 21, 2019) — Twitter officials have said they have closed more than 200,000 accounts they believe are linked to the Chinese state and a Hong Kong-led anti-protest campaign, Russia Today reports.
The company also announced that it would ban all Chinese company ads, extending the ban it first applied in 2017 to two Russian entities.
A senior Twitter official said in an interview that both measures are part of a broader effort to counter malicious political activities on this popular platform that were previously criticized for allowing US to interfere with international elections and for accepting money from state media organizations for propaganda ads.
The accounts were formally closed for violating the terms of service and “because we believe this is not a way to keep people informed,” a Twitter official said in an interview with AP.
An official whose name was not disclosed because of security reasons has said that Chinese activity was reported to the FBI, which also investigated Russia’s attempts to interfere via social media in the 2016 US presidential election.
Twitter, for example, found two false accounts – Chinese and English, both posing as Hong Kong-based media organizations. In tweets coming from these accounts, protesters were portrayed as violent criminals, apparently in a campaign aimed at influencing public opinion around the world.
Although Twitter is banned in China, it is available in Hong Kong.
Another 936 Twitter accounts are thought to come from China, which sought to fuel political discord in Hong Kong, undermining the legitimacy and political views of the protesters’ movement. The accounts in question have been closed.
About 200,000 automated Twitter accounts were redistributing those messages, however, a few have posted more than one tweet, the official said, because Twitter has mostly caught them all through its technology.
Facebook said it has removed seven pages, three groups and five Twitter-related accounts for the same reasons.
The Twitter campaign reflects the fact that Chinese authorities have studied the role of social media in mass social movements, and fears that protests in Hong Kong could cause widespread unrest, said James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It is standard Chinese domestic practice, and we know that since 2016 they have carefully studied what the Russians did in the United States,” Lewis said.
Since the 2016 US presidential election, Twitter has sought to toughen its network in order to defend from malicious political activity and to be more transparent in conducting its investigations, publicly disclosing data on government influenced operations, so that others can evaluate it, an official of the company said.
State-supported media organizations can still use Twitter but are no longer allowed to place paid ads.
Twitter has refused to submit a list of media organizations it considers state-owned, and in 2017 announced a ban on Russian RTs and Sputnik from advertising on that platform.