The New York Times - 19.09.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESSTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 N B7

SOCIAL MEDIA

and Facebook — to advance its
agenda across the rest of the plan-
et.
It has done so in part by setting
up accounts on the platforms for
its state-run news outlets, such as
China Daily, to make a public case
for its views. But that is quite dif-
ferent from using fake accounts to
manipulate opinions surrepti-
tiously or simply to sow confusion.
“The end goal is to control the
conversation,” said Matt
Schrader, a China analyst with the
Alliance for Securing Democracy
at the German Marshall Fund in
Washington.
Twitter last month took down
nearly 1,000 accounts that it said
were part of a state-directed effort
to undermine the antigovernment
protests in Hong Kong. It also sus-
pended 200,000 other accounts
that it said were connected to the
Chinese operation but not yet
very active. Facebook and
YouTube quickly followed suit. All
three platforms are blocked in
mainland China but not in Hong
Kong.
The 3.6 million tweets that the
accounts sent represented a cam-
paign that was less sophisticated
and more hastily assembled than
the one Russia carried out during
the 2016 United States presiden-
tial election, researchers at the
Australian Strategic Policy Insti-
tute said in a report published this
month.
Instead of taking the time to cul-
tivate plausible yet fake online
personalities, the campaign’s op-
erators appear to have simply
bought accounts in the shadowy
global marketplace for social me-
dia influence, where followers and
retweets can be had for cheap.
The accounts posted in Indone-
sian, Arabic, Portuguese and
other languages. They promoted
hookup services, posted about Ko-

rean boy bands and retweeted messages about pop-punk music. “As a Hong Kong person who loves Hong Kong, I really miss the Hong Kong of before, which was developed and ruled by law,” @derrickmcnabbx wrote in Chi- nese on June 15. The account’s lo- cation was described as “Georgia, USA.” Before this year, nearly all of its tweets were links to pornography. The “blunt-force” approach, the authors of the Australian report wrote, suggested that the operation was likely to have been a “rapid response to the unantici- pated size and power of the Hong Kong protests rather than a campaign planned well in advance.” A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said he had no knowledge of the matter when asked last month whether the government was behind the accounts that Twitter and Facebook took down. In its announcement, Twitter said little about how it determined that the accounts it removed were state directed. The company said it routinely monitored for such campaigns but declined to com- ment further. The Chinese government blocks Twitter’s service in mainland China, and yet some of the accounts were operated from un- blocked Chinese internet ad- dresses, the company said. Some of the activity was traced to ad- dresses in Beijing, according to a person familiar with Twitter’s in- vestigation who feared retaliation from the government and re- quested anonymity. There are already some signs that Twitter has not halted the Chinese campaign entirely. Nick Monaco of Institute for the Future, a think tank in Palo Alto, Calif., identified 17 accounts that had

strong similarities to those that Twitter took down but which re- mained active. Some of the accounts tweeted messages that matched, word for word, ones that Twitter had de- leted. They used the same third- party software as many of the accounts Twitter had removed to post messages with similar themes, in what seemed to be a co- ordinated manner. After The New York Times presented Mr. Monaco’s findings to Twitter last week, the company shut the accounts down but declined to say conclusively whether they had been part of the same state-backed network. Many of the accounts originally identified by Twitter had spread pro-government messages during other public-relations crises for Beijing. Large numbers of such messages began appearing in 2017, after the exiled businessman Guo Wengui began accusing sen- ior Chinese leaders of graft, which raises the question of why Twitter did not remove the accounts sooner.

During some of their tweet campaigns, the accounts posted pri- marily during the workweek, a sign that the accounts were run by employees working on the clock. For months, one account posted messages smearing Mr. Guo at 12 and 42 minutes past the hour, sug- gesting that the activity was auto- mated. Some of the accounts appear to have been started by genuine users but were later hijacked. The first four years of posts on one account, @emiliya_naum, read like those of an ordinary American teenager. She tweeted longingly at @justinbieber and said she twerked in her room to celebrate Barack Obama’s 2012 election vic- tory. She cataloged her moods and mused about her crushes. “The guy I like and my best friend hate each other... #ThisIs- ntGood,” she wrote in 2012. Then, like many Twitter users, she let her account fall silent — until this summer, when she re- emerged as a cheerleader for Hong Kong law enforcement.

“Hong Kong police, way to go, we support you!” she tweeted, in Chinese. “We understand your hardships!” It could not be determined whether @emiliya_naum was originally operated by a real person. No accounts with that name were found on Facebook, Insta- gram or other major social platforms. By and large, the accounts that Twitter took down struggled to go viral with their pro-Beijing messages. Many of their most retweeted posts were links to pornography and animal videos. Elise Thomas, one of the authors of the Australian report, said that the low level of professional- ism suggested that the campaign was not the work of the People’s Liberation Army or the Ministry of State Security, which have pre- viously been linked to Chinese cy- berespionage and information campaigns. “I would be surprised if the P.L.A. was responsible because I would expect they would be more competent than this,” Ms. Thomas

said. Turning spam bots into propaganda mouthpieces would repre- sent a natural evolution of tech- niques that Beijing has long used at home. For years, China has used ar- mies of pseudonymous keyboard warriors to flood domestic social platforms and news sites with pro- government comments. Samm Sacks, a China expert at New America, a Washington- based think tank, said the clumsi- ness of the Twitter operations showed that China was still “out of its depth in trying to shape the in- ternational narrative.” “What works inside China does- n’t work internationally,” she said. “I think China is probably working through that now.”

Closed Twitter Accounts Targeted Chinese Dissidents

THE NEW YORK TIMES

@Sawyer19Carole So Yang Jianli spreads rumors everywhere, disguising himself as a victim, when in fact he is the one who wants to persecute others.

@ksiushalapina73 Gui Minhai was taken off a train by Chinese police on Jan. 20, various foreign media outlets made a big fuss about it. Chinese law does not tolerate such criticism from the foreign media

@valentinax5w1sw Guo Wengui, as a wanted criminal, you have evaded taxes in China, forcibly taken your female employees as mistresses, used recordings to threaten business partners, wooed and corrupted government officials.

Jan. 2018 April July Oct. Jan. 2019 April July

TOPICS:

Each circle represents a tweet from one of the closed accounts. Circles are sized by number of retweets.

More than 200,000 Twitter accounts were part of a sprawling Russian-style disinformation offensive from China, Twitter now says, the first time an
American technology giant has attributed such a campaign to the Chinese government. Before the accounts became focused on the Hong Kong
protests, they smeared critics of the Chinese government, according to analyses by The Times and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Yang Jianli, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was accused of being a fraud.

Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller who disappeared, then resurfaced in police custody in China, was also targeted.

The favorite target was Guo Wengui, a businessman who accused top Chinese officials of corruption. The accounts attacked him continuously for more than two years.

Tweets about the Hong Kong protests and the extradition bill exploded after June 9, the day of the first big demonstration.

How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong Protests

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE

Jan. 2019

June 2018 @HKpoliticalnew Now Andy Murray’s out of Wimbledon, cheer on these young British hopefuls https://t.co/ct2kgTuEgU

@HKpoliticalnew Hong Kong independence is a dead end. But there are always people who are vying to go into the fire pit. Pathetic!

@HKpoliticalnew The United States is funding ‘Hong Kong independence’ and brainwashing deadbeat kids #spieseverywhere #colorrevolution #hongkong

Twitter accounts like @HKpoliticalnew, which originally focused on
sports, were repurposed to to spread propaganda in Chinese against the
Hong Kong protesters.

How One Account Was Used

To Spread Misinformation

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tweets from @HKpoliticalnew

Dots are sized by number of retweets

IN ENGLISH IN CHINESE

Raymond Zhong reported from Beijing, and Steven Lee Myers and Jin Wu from Hong Kong. Kate Conger contributed reporting from San Francisco, and Davey Alba and Keith Collins from New York. Wang Yiwei contributed research from Beijing.

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The New York Times - 19.09.2019

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