According to reports, officials close to the Chinese government are actively working on a social media campaign to hide the country’s largest protests on social media, especially Twitter.
This came to light on Monday when users took to Twitter to uncover that searches for major Chinese cities redirected to accounts of esports, which overtook news about ongoing protests in these cities.
One user tweeted, “Chinese bots are flooding Twitter with *escort ads*, possibly to make it more difficult for Chinese users to access information about mass protests. Some of this work has been going on for years Inactive since, only became active yesterday after protests. China erupted.”
Chinese bots are flooding Twitter with *escort ads*, possibly to make it more difficult for Chinese users to find information about the massive protests. Some of these functions have been dormant for years, only reactivated yesterday after the protests began in China. For example: pic.twitter.com/QRYLQu09Pq
— Mengyu Dong (@dong_mengyu) November 27, 2022
Therefore, whenever a user searches for a city name like Shanghai or Beijing in Chinese script, the search results are filled with advertisements for escorts, bot accounts engaged in pornography, or even gambling mobs.
The director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former chief security office at Meta (formerly known as Facebook) said early data suggests it may be a ploy to create informational disinformation and reduce outside visibility at the protests in China. Intentional attack.
Still working on our own analysis, but here’s some good preliminary data that points to this being a deliberate attack to cover up informational disinformation and reduce external visibility of the protests in China is (Twitter being blocked for most PRC citizens):https://t.co/kPK7nMeCPu
— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) November 28, 2022
Protests have started in China against the country’s zero covid policy which has led to a nationwide shutdown once again.
