Xinjiang: Twitter closes thousands of China state-linked accounts spreading propaganda
www.theguardian.com
Content was often ‘embarrassingly’ produced and pumped out via repurposed accounts, analysts say

Of course, US and EU propaganda accounts have not been suspended :)

The operations used photos and images, shell and potentially automated accounts, and fake Uyghur profiles, to disseminate state propaganda and fake testimonials about their happy lives in the region, seeking to dispel evidence of a years-long campaign of oppression, with mass internments, re-education programs, and allegations of forced labour and sterilisation.

“The target is not actually people who are sceptical of the Chinese government, but is giving content to people who trust Chinese state media and are sceptical of western mainstream media,” said ASPI researcher Albert Zhang. “It’s propaganda appealing to the base.”

ASPI found 97% of the identified accounts had fewer than five followers, and 73% of accounts had zero. While 98% of tweets had no likes or retweets, the remainder were often boosted by Chinese diplomats and officials, spreading the content and giving it legitimacy.

  • southerntofuOP
    2·
    3 years ago

    Yeah it would be wild :)

    Though to be fair to Twitter US/EU psyops usually don’t employ fake accounts but rather storefronts like “francophonie” institute for the French empire or USAID for the US empire, or “free” radios and newspapers in foreign countries where they dispute the local powers. The troll factories like Putin or Xi Jinping have is so far unseen in the western empires because they don’t NEED such elaborate strategies.

    Twitter/Facebook have been really strong at banning anti-nationalist/anarchist propaganda (eg. “anti-France”, or antifascist) and white-supremacist content, but they’re not really interesting in doing anything against imperialist/nationalist propaganda (unless served from botnets of fake accounts).

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
      2·
      3 years ago

      On that note, I love how Twitter and YouTube will mark state affiliated accounts in Russia or China but won’t do it for many US propaganda accounts like RFA.