Twitter and Facebook suspend accounts linked to Chinese government

Twitter and Facebook have suspended accounts for running a state-sponsored propaganda campaign targeting Hong Kong protesters.

Twitter says it suspended 936 accounts that were “deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong” as well as 200,000 more “spammy” accounts that were “proactively suspended before they were substantially active.” 

The accounts in question targeted protesters in Hong Kong, who have been demonstrating for weeks.

Twitter described the ring of accounts as a “significant state-backed information operation,” and noted that some accounts were created using VPN services. 

Separately, the company also announced that it would ban state-sponsored media outlets from buying ads on its platform. BuzzFeed earlier reported that Chinese state-run media was running Facebook and Twitter ads that called protesters “violent” and “lawbreakers.”

Following Twitter’s disclosure, Facebook also revealed that it had suspended a “small network” of accounts, pages, and groups running a similar information campaign about the Hong Kong protests. The accounts compared protesters to cockroaches and ISIS fighters, according to some of the screenshots shared by the company. 

Though Facebook characterized the ring of accounts as “small” — consisting of five accounts, seven pages, and three groups — they managed to reach more than 17,000 Facebook users, the company said.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the Chinese government,” Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a statement.

“We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. As with all of these takedowns, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.”