You may not have much luck finding news about the unfolding protests in China if you search for the country’s major cities on Twitter. As TechCrunch reports, analysts have detected an accumulation of bots selling and betting around those requests, just like the protests. have erupted in Beijing and other cities over the past 3 days in reaction to China’s “zero-COVID” policies. Spam makes it difficult to track demonstrations, especially for local activists who use Twitter through a VPN to bypass the Chinese government’s censorship of protests in the national media. social networks.
Twitter well disbanded its communications team and did not officially comment on the matter. However, the Washington Post notes that a Twitter employee told an investigator that the company was “working to fix” the bot problem. It was easier to find news of the bot. protests on Sunday night, but spam still filled the results. A former staff member told the Post that government-linked Twitter accounts have already received spam en masse, but have yet to target individual accounts or small groups.
Protests have escalated largely following a fatal fire at an apartment in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province. Critics have blamed the Chinese government’s strict COVID-19 lockdown measures for delaying firefighters and otherwise contributing to deaths. Work situations at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, adding considerations about insufficient COVID protective measures, have also led to protests. Street action is rare in its intensity: some protesters have called on President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party members to resign. These requests can easily lead to criminal sentencing in the country.
There are fears that Elon Musk’s competitive task cuts have made the scenario worse. TechCrunch noted that the entrepreneur had fired Twitter’s anti-propaganda team, leaving only the main moderation group. While Twitter temporarily reacted to China’s attempts to undermine the protests in Hong Kong. , It took days to start fighting spam this time. The company resumed hiring, but it’s unclear what the anti-disinformation unit will receive.
The spike also calls into question Musk’s position on bots. He tried to pull out of the Twitter acquisition by claiming that the social network hides the real number of fake accounts. Spammers and other fake users may now be more problematic than before, if only because Twitter isn’t as well equipped to deal with the threat.