SEOUL, South Korea — In November, Bao Pu, a veteran human rights activist visiting Beijing,
posted videos of university protests
against China's strict coronavirus stay-at-home orders on Twitter.
He gained more than 10,000 followers in the weeks that followed.
However, her friends and fellow activists were quick to tell her that they were having trouble finding her posts—and even her account—on Twitter.
“I was shocked,” said Bao, a Hong Kong resident.
She said she feared that Twitter was "putting a limit on the influence" she could have.
Bao Pu, a veteran human rights activist, in Hong Kong.
(Lam Yik Fei/The New York Times)
More than 30 prominent Chinese dissidents and activists have faced similar visibility problems on Twitter in recent months, according to interviews with nine of them and screenshots of search results.
Screenshots showed that the activists' accounts did not show up after a Twitter search for their names, although impostor accounts did show up.
Three of the dissidents claimed their accounts had also been suspended without notice and reinstated only after appeal.
What the Chinese activists found on Twitter is representative of the
problems that have plagued the social networking service since Elon Musk took control
of the company in October.
Musk has reduced Twitter's staff from 7,500 to 2,200 employees, leaving fewer staff available to oversee the company's spam filters, handle user inquiries about their accounts and fix other problems, six said. people knowledgeable about the service.
This has caused problems across the platform.
In November, following a turbulent election in Brazil, hashtags falsely claiming then-President Jair Bolsonaro had won the popular vote began trending on Twitter.
Racist slurs have increased on the platform and images of child abuse continue to proliferate, although Musk has vowed to clean the site of such material.
Last Wednesday, users around the world reported that they could no longer post or send messages, apparently new glitches.
The issues have also
silenced leading Chinese voices on Twitter
at a crucial political moment, despite Musk's standing up for free speech.
In November, protesters in dozens of Chinese cities opposed President Xi Jinping's restrictive “zero COVID” policies, in some of the largest demonstrations in a generation.
The problems faced by the Chinese activists' Twitter accounts stemmed from errors in the company's automated systems designed to filter spam and government disinformation campaigns, according to four people with knowledge of the service. .
In the past, those systems were routinely monitored and errors were regularly addressed by staff.
But a team cleaning up spam and countering influence operations that numbered nearly 50 people at its peak, a third of them in Asia, was
down to single digits due to recent layoffs and departures,
two of them said. people.
The head of the division for the Asia-Pacific region, whose responsibilities included the Chinese activist accounts, was fired in January.
Twitter's resources dedicated to overseeing the content moderation of Chinese-language posts have been drastically reduced.
So when some Twitter systems recently failed to differentiate between a Chinese disinformation campaign and authentic accounts, it was hard to find some accounts of Chinese activists and dissidents.
"It's hard to be a Twitter user these days
," said Jenn Takahashi, who runs the @bestofdyingtwit account, which has charted the platform's shortcomings since Musk took the helm.
She added that she, too, had struggled to see tweets from people he followed, with notifications "delayed or sent twice," and direct messages filled with "so much spam."
Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter.
(File/REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Twitter and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
In December, Musk acknowledged the visibility restrictions of some users and announced plans to improve Twitter's transparency in this regard.
Moderation in languages other than English has been a particular challenge for US social media companies, which are often understaffed in those areas and rely on imperfect machine translations, explained Gabriel Nicholas, a researcher at the Center for Democracy & Technology who studies content moderation and misinformation on social media.
“If Twitter makes mistakes in the Chinese language, it is very possible that it will make mistakes in other languages as well,” he said.
Twitter has long been banned in China.
Nonetheless, in recent years
it has been a gathering point for Chinese dissidents
, human rights activists, and overseas Chinese communities seeking to discuss censored topics in mainland China.
During the November protests, Twitter was inundated with Chinese-language spam bots offering pornography, gambling sites and escort services,
a common Chinese government tactic to influence the type of China-related information
the world sees. abroad.
In recent months, the company's automated systems had not been properly maintained, allowing spam to rise and sometimes inadvertently restricting prominent Chinese accounts, according to four people.
According to results collected on January 5 by Shadow Bird, a website that analyzes accounts blocked in Twitter search results, tweets from 30 Chinese dissident accounts did not appear in search results.
(The website takes into account how search results change based on users' location.)
Some Chinese activists said
their Twitter accounts had been suspended in recent weeks without explanation
.
“I didn't understand what was going on,” said Wang Qingpeng, a Seattle human rights lawyer whose Twitter account was suspended on December 15.
"My account is neither liberal nor conservative, I never write in English and only focus on Chinese human rights issues."
Wang, whose tweets have mostly been about awareness campaigns about Chinese political prisoners, said he had appealed the suspension to Twitter but received no response.
After ten days, the appeal link stopped working.
His account was reinstated on January 10, when Twitter sent him an email saying his account had been "mistakenly flagged as posting spam."
Many of the 30 Chinese activist accounts that had visibility problems have reappeared in search results after The New York Times contacted Twitter.
Shen Liangqing, 60, a writer from China's Anhui province who
has spent more than six years in jail for his political activism
, said he loved speaking his mind on Twitter.
But when his account was abruptly suspended in January, he reminded her of China's censorship, he said.
“If this platform blocks our accounts, we will lose a vehicle for our voice to be heard
,” he said.
c.2023 The New York Times Company
