Twitter shuts down more than 170,000 pro-China accounts

Twitter has shut down more than 170,000 accounts it says were part of a plan to broadcast Chinese-backed messages.

The social media platform says that some of these posts and tweets were related to the corona virus epidemic. According to the company, these include 23,750 highly active original accounts and 150,000 amplifier accounts.

Amplifier means accounts that sent more of the original messages.

Twitter has also shut down more than 1,000 accounts in Russia that it claims spread misleading information.

Twitter says the Chinese network was based in China and was involved in an operation it launched last year in a joint operation with Facebook and YouTube.

The network also broadcast messages about the situation in Hong Kong.

“Although this network is new, it uses the same technical links that were used in August 2019 to identify it,” Twitter said in its company blog. He is from China.

The US-based social media platform Twitter added that it had “carefully monitored and investigated the Chinese-led operation.”

According to Twitter, the two linked accounts were caught in the beginning, so the number of their followers is not high.

“The network, involved in various misleading activities, mostly supported the Chinese Communist Party in Chinese and provided false information about the political situation in Hong Kong,” the blog said.

Twitter says it has also discovered a media website that was involved in state-sponsored political propaganda inside Russia. Twitter has also suspended 1,152 of these accounts. According to Twitter, “his activities included promoting the United Russia Party and attacking political opponents.”

Rooting out misleading information

Last week, Twitter accused US President Donald Trump of making false claims in some of his posts. However, Twitter was also criticized for not removing misinformation about the corona virus.

Earlier this week, Twitter announced that it was testing a new pop-up called ‘Read Before You Retweet’, aimed at promoting ‘informed discussions’. Is.

This message will appear on the screen when users start sharing an article without reading it.