The social media giants, Twitter and Facebook have stood up against the cheap Chinese state backed operations to undermine the Hong Kong protests. US based social media companies have now suspended quite a number of fake accounts spreading disinformation to create a political discord in Hong Kong.
There are a lot of fake accounts identified by Twitter to be carrying out a disinformation campaign against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. The accounts have been identified to sow political discord in Hong Kong.
Twitter said on Monday according to CNBC report, it suspended 936 accounts likely related to the activity. The company said the disinformation campaign was designed to “sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political protest movement on the ground.”
More than 1.7 million anti-government protesters gathered in Hong Kong to rally peacefully against the Chinese government. Protests erupted in June following a now-suspended bill that would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China. The unrest has been fueled by broader worries about the erosion of freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula put in place after Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997, including an independent judiciary and right to protest, according to the report.
“Based on our intensive investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation,” the company said in a blog post. “Specifically, we have identified large clusters of accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related to the Hong Kong protests.”. Facebook has too followed the same footsteps on the tip from Twitter.
Twitter has already removed around 936 accounts related to the activity and Facebook removed seven pages, three groups and five accounts. As a result, Twitter said it would no longer accept advertising from state-controlled news media entities.
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