(Bloomberg) — Twitter Inc. found and deleted hundreds of accounts it said China used to undermine the Hong Kong protest movement and calls for political change.
The company said it took down 936 accounts that originated within China and attempted to manipulate perspectives on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Facebook Inc., acting on a tip from Twitter, said it also found a similar Chinese government-backed operation on its social network, with five fake accounts, seven pages and three groups.
“Based on our intensive investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation,” Twitter said Monday in a blog post. “Overall, these accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground.”
Facebook came to the same conclusion. “Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the Chinese government,” the company said in a blog post.
Twitter said it also is going to stop accepting advertising from state-backed media worldwide, after finding propaganda messages that Chinese-run media paid to promote on its site. The ban doesn’t affect taxpayer-funded or independently operated media like the BBC.
(Updates with Facebook’s ban in the second paragraph.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Frier in San Francisco at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at [email protected], Andrew Pollack, Alistair Barr
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