The American social network Twitter will close tens of thousands of propaganda and disinformation accounts linked to the Chinese government, his compatriot Zoom acknowledges for his part to have acceded to requests from Beijing to suspend accounts in the United States and Hong Kong human rights.
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Twitter, like YouTube, Google and Facebook, is banned in China, which has a " Great Computer Wall " to block unwanted content. But Chinese diplomats and state media are flooding these message platforms. On Friday, Twitter announced that it had deactivated a " core " of 23,750 accounts linked to China and relayed by some 150,000 other accounts serving as " amplifiers ". The contents have been saved for scientific research.
Propaganda online
The network was discovered with tools put in place in August to clear accounts linked to Beijing during pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. This network published tweets, mainly in Chinese and probably intended for the diaspora, " disseminating geopolitical theories favorable to the Chinese Communist Party, while supporting misleading theories on the political dynamics in Hong Kong ", explains Twitter in an analysis note .
These thousands of accounts have also served to promote Beijing's views on the fight against the coronavirus, then the anti-racist demonstrations in the United States to " create the perception of moral equivalence with the suppression of the demonstrations in Hong Kong ", according to the Australian think tank Aspi (Australian Strategic Policy Institute) which analyzed them.
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" While the Chinese Communist Party does not allow the Chinese people to use Twitter, our analysis shows that it does not hesitate to use it to spread propaganda and misinformation internationally, " said an official. from Aspi, Fergus Hanson. Most of the tweets were written during Chinese business hours, especially on weekdays, which " clearly suggests a lack of authenticity and coordination, " according to Aspi.
In May, Twitter posted a warning to verify the facts on a tweet from a Chinese government spokesperson echoing a conspiracy theory that the U.S. military may have introduced the new coronavirus into China. This massive deletion of accounts is the second offensive in a year by American technology companies to counter networks of influence attributed to the Chinese government.
Urgent issues
In August 2019, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have already deleted thousands of accounts to counter a vast campaign by Chinese authorities to discredit the pro-democracy mobilization in Hong Kong. The Chinese foreign ministry said it was " not aware of the situation ."
In its announcement on Friday, Twitter added that it had closed 7,340 accounts linked to Turkey, a network detected in early 2020 and mainly devoted, according to him, to the promotion of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling party, and 1152 linked to Russia, which promoted the party in power and attacked its detractors.
The attitude adopted by Western platforms towards the conduct and demands of authoritarian governments, whose countries also represent important markets, raises increasingly pressing questions. The Zoom video conference application, popularized during the confinement linked to the coronavirus, thus finds itself at the heart of concerns for freedom of expression.
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Californian company said on Thursday evening that it had acceded to requests from Beijing to close three accounts of prominent human rights activists in the United States and Hong Kong who wanted to commemorate the deadly Chinese crackdown on Tiananmen City against pro protests. -democracy in June 1989, a taboo episode in China.
For Zoom, this response " was a failure " and " should not have reached users outside of mainland China ". The accounts have been reactivated and Zoom provides tools to comply only in their countries with requests from governments to stop activities they consider illegal. " Zoom will not allow Chinese government demands to have an impact on anyone outside of mainland China, " he said.
