This archive report was first published on 12 June 2020.
June 12, 2020
Twitter has taken a significant step in combating misinformation by removing over 170,000 accounts it claims were tied to an operation spreading pro-China messages.
According to the company, some of these posts were related to the coronavirus outbreak, which has been a major concern globally.
Twitter revealed that a core network of 23,750 highly active accounts had been deleted, along with another 150,000 'amplifier accounts' that were helping to boost the messages online.
The company also announced that it had shut down more than a thousand Russia-based misinformation accounts.
Twitter stated that the Chinese network, based in the People's Republic of China (PRC), had links to an earlier state-backed operation that was broken up alongside Facebook and YouTube last year.
That operation had been pushing out messages about the political situation in Hong Kong.
Twitter said it had been 'thoroughly studying and investigating past coordinated information operations from the PRC' and had identified the technical links used to attribute the activity to the PRC as consistent with activity initially identified and disclosed in August 2019.
While the 23,750 accounts were the main focus, 150,000 accounts were identified as helping to boost the messages online.
Twitter said the two interconnected sets of accounts were caught early and typically had very few followers with low levels of engagement.
Twitter also discovered a network of accounts linked to a media website it found to be 'engaging in state-backed political propaganda within Russia'. This network of accounts, totalling 1,152, has now been suspended.
Activities included promoting the United Russia party and attacking political dissidents, Twitter's blog added.
Twitter has been making efforts to combat misinformation, including accusing US President Donald Trump of making false claims in some of his posts.
The company has also trialled a new 'read before you retweet' pop-up aimed to promote 'informed discussion'.
