In a tall stand by the social media giant Twitter, more than 170000 accounts affiliated to running Chinese campaigns have been deleted. In one of the rare results, US based social media giant has decided to challenge Chinese influence and stand up against it. Analytical teams have found active involvement from Beijing administration with these accounts.
A total of 23,750 core accounts and 150,000 amplifier accounts have been removed by Twitter on Thursday. These accounts on the popular platform have been found run influence campaigns from the Chinese government. While core accounts provided primary influencing posts, the amplifier accounts boosted their posts on Twitter.
“The company announced on Thursday that 23,750 core accounts – and 150,000 “amplifier” accounts that boosted the content posted by those core accounts – had been removed from the platform after being linked to an influence campaign from the People’s Republic.” said the report by The Guardian adding that these accounts have been used for state-linked influence campaigns from China focusing on Hong Kong protests, Covid-19 and the US protests in relation to George Floyd.
The cleaning campaign from Twitter was targeted at Chinese-speaking audiences outside the country “with the intention of influencing perceptions on key issues, including the Hong Kong protests, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and, to a lesser extent, Covid-19 and Taiwan”, as access to Twitter in China is blocked.
The researchers analysed 348,608 tweets between January 2018 and April 2020 and found most tweets were posted during business hours in Beijing between Monday and Friday, and dropped off on the weekends. The tweets usually contained images featuring Chinese-language text, with researchers finding that the primary targets of the campaign were people living in Hong Kong, followed by broader Chinese diaspora, added the report.
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