Twitter and Facebook officials said on Monday that they have shut down hundreds of accounts linked to the Chinese government and used to spread misinformation about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
In a statement, Twitter officials said they had identified 936 accounts that were coordinating attacks on the protest movement and its leaders. But those were just the most active of what Twitter called a “larger, spammy network” of potentially 20,000 accounts.
“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,” the Twitter statement said.
Facebook issued its own statement simultaneously, saying that it had removed seven pages, three groups, and five Facebook accounts tied to the same Chinese state-sponsored information campaign. Some “15,500 accounts followed one or more of these Pages and about 2,200 accounts joined at least one of these Groups,” Facebook officials said in the statement. “The individuals behind this campaign engaged in a number of deceptive tactics, including the use of fake accounts — some of which had been already disabled by our automated systems — to manage Pages posing as news organizations, post in Groups, disseminate their content, and also drive people to off-platform news sites.”
Some of the posts likened the Hong Kong protestors to terrorist organizations such as ISIS. One post painted the protesters as cockroaches.
source: NextGov
