Twitter shuts down 170,000 accounts for spreading Chinese govt narratives

The company said that accounts were “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China” and were removed for violating its platform manipulation policies

Twitter on Thursday announced that it has shut down over 1,70,000 accounts for “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable” to the Chinese government.According to CNN, experts working with Twitter said that these accounts were pushing deceptive narratives around the Hong Kong protests, COVID-19, and other topics.

Renee DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said that many of these accounts were set up in January and had been engaged in posting about Covid-19. “Narratives around COVID,” the SIO wrote in its analysis, “praise China’s response to the virus while tweets also use the pandemic to antagonize the U.S. and Hong Kong activists.”

Among the targets of the Chinese campaign were overseas Chinese “in an effort to exploit their capacity to extend the party-state’s influence,” according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a group Twitter worked with to analyze the accounts. Twitter said the accounts tweeted “predominantly in Chinese languages.”

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Renee DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said that many of these accounts were set up in January and had been engaged in posting about Covid-19. “Narratives around COVID,” the SIO wrote in its analysis, “praise China’s response to the virus while tweets also use the pandemic to antagonize the U.S. and Hong Kong activists.”