Twitter Disengages Over 170,000 Pro China Accounts

Twitter has erased over 170,000 accounts that it claimed were connected to a pro-China messaging operation

According to the social media platform, most of those posts, are confirmed to be related to the coronavirus pandemic. In its response, the social network giant told that “a core network” of 23,750 extremely engaged accounts and another C150,000 “amplifier accounts” had been erased.

Twitter has announced that it has pulled down more than a thousand propaganda accounts originating in Russia

The company also revealed that the Chinese system, based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), seems to have links to a previous state-backed operation it broke up last year alongside Facebook and YouTube.

That operation had spurred messages about Hong Kong’s political situation. “While this network is new, the technical links we used to identify the activity and attribute it to the PRC remain consistent with an activity we initially identified and disclosed in August 2019,” Twitter said in its business site, where the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey also posted.

The US-based social network added that it had been “thoroughly researching and analyzing previously organized PRC intelligence operations.” Whereas the primary focus was on the 23,750 accounts, it recognized 150,000 accounts linked to similar manipulative operations on the platform.

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“In general, this entire network was involved in a range of manipulative and coordinated activities. 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,” the blog post mentioned.

Twitter also claimed that it had uncovered a network of accounts connected to a media website that found itself “engaging in state-sponsored political manipulation in Russia.” This account network, which reaches 1,152, has now been discontinued. “Included activities were to promote the United Russia party and assault political dissenters,” an additional blog post that came from twitter.