On Thursday, the microblogging platform Twitter has taken action on more than 1.7 lakh social media accounts that were promoting pro-China narrative. A campaign was being run in support of the Chinese government on these accounts in the wake of which Twitter terminated these accounts. Experts who work with the social media company stated that related accounts were being posted on Hong Kong protests and the COVID-19 epidemic.
As per the disclosure report posted on Twitter’s blog, the company declared that it had recognized and suspended accounts for misusing the services to disseminate state-linked information. Twitter also shared the pertinent data with its two leading research partners Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
Twitter stated that in line with the Communist Party of China, these accounts were disseminating Geopolitical Narrative which is against our policies, so the action has been taken on them. Twitter stated that tweets in suspended accounts were largely in Chinese languages. Although Twitter is officially prohibited in China and people there use social media sites through VPN connections.
According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the target of this Chinese campaign was Chinese nationals living abroad. Twitter stated that it recognized 23,750 accounts as a highly integrated core network used to tweet content aided by China and 150,000 accounts that used to promote this content. For instance, retweeting content posted by core accounts.
Earlier also twitter has suspended or closed accounts for infringing regulations. In a statement, Twitter stated that they would offer more transparency in the public archive. They will continue to improve their system and algorithms to assure diversity. In summer, To discuss possibilities of further collaborations Twitter will conduct a conference to consult experts, industry and government.
