According to reports, Chinese bots are flooding Twitter with sexually explicit posts in an apparent effort to halt the dissemination of information about the widespread protests against Covid-19 lockdowns in the nation. Chinese bot accounts, which are not run by humans, are used to flood the social networking service with advertisements for sex workers, pornography, and gambling when users use Chinese script to search for a large city in the country, such as Shanghai or Beijing.
Numerous posts from the accounts thought to be affiliated with the government contained city names, escort service URLs, and sexually explicit content. The Washington Post claims that this served to stifle information about demonstrations against China’s zero-Covid policy.
The Chinese action was the ‘first big failure’ to stop governmental interference under Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, according to Alex Stamos, head of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Because Twitter is blocked inside of China, he continued, the measures appeared to be meant to reduce the amount of time that the demonstrations were being seen internationally.
A journalist specialising in technology and censorship named Mengyu Dong tweeted on Sunday: ‘Chinese bots are deluging Twitter with ‘escort advertising,’ apparently to make it harder for Chinese users to find out about the massive demonstrations. Some of these activities were dormant for years before becoming active yesterday as a result of the unrest in China’.
Following significant job losses at Twitter, notably among members of the trust and safety team, came news of the apparent manipulation of Twitter by Chinese government sources, which was originally reported by the Washington Post. Half of the company’s 7,500 employees have allegedly been let go, and another 1,200 have reportedly gone after Musk told the remaining staff to embrace being ‘hardcore’ or quit, according to reports.
Whistleblower claims that Twitter is frequently hacked by foreign governments. The company’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko, claimed to be aware of ‘several events’ in which Twitter was penetrated by foreign intelligence agencies or involved in a danger to democracies. Several protests broke out over the weekend in several Chinese cities, prompting the Twitter warning.
Crowds of a few hundred to a few thousand people have attended peaceful street marches and candlelight vigils. In some cities, including Wuhan, protesters overturned security barriers, and in Shanghai, they engaged in combat with police. Demands for the end of lockdowns and frequent mass testing have been made by protesters holding candles, phone lights, and blank pieces of paper.
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