China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter
qz.com
qz.com
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are all blocked in mainland China. Many people, especially those young and well-educated, use VPN to access them, have an account and follow world news and foreign celebrities sometimes.
There are popular and feature-rich counterparts in mainland, and most people prefer to have their daily sharing and discussion (including domestic politics) there instead of on social media based in US. Therefore most of the time, their accounts on Facebook or Twitter are mainly for reading rather than sharing and posting.
However, they might comment (register a new account if needed) on topics conveying a message related to China they strongly disagree (you could argue they are brainwashed), in a short period and coordinated way (they read repost from the same domestic website), through a few common IP addresses (the same VPN), with bad-written English (seldom practice writing before). But they are not bots and it's inappropriate to label these as the typical state-run misinformation campaign.
If you speak Chinese, you could find many discussions where ordinary people complain their accounts get blocked because of pro-China comments. e.g. https://weibo.com/1401527553/I32ryx2cu
Of course, these observations aren't necessarily contradictory with recent reports blaming China propaganda. I just want to show how some false positivity could happen, since there's some difference of the behaviour of China's users. Maybe a better algorithm is needed to distinguish them from government-backed activities.
On the other hand, how many of those "ordinary people" are really part of the operation and simply complaining to create doubt?
There's no shortage of people who will happily repeat the most inane, counterfactual political rhetoric. Don't assume they are paid shills, bots, or foreign spies.
Sure, but some version of this goes for every country on every form of social media, with a little freedom over the "some" and the "might".
However, I would like to translate a comment from that Weibo link (feel free to call it propaganda):
多个英文媒体对这次封号问题的报道反映出了西方社会及媒体对中国近几年来民意变化状态不了解的事实，也反映出了他们对中国民间广泛接受反分裂和支持政府价值观这一现象的不理解。依据他们的理论，共产主义国家的平民必然是反共的，当事实与他们深信不疑的理论相左时，他们选择发明事实来修正理论。
The coverage of this blocking issue by several English-language media reflects the fact that Western society and the media do not understand China's public opinion changes in recent years, and it also reflects their failure to understand the widespread acceptance of anti-secession and support for government values. According to their theory, the civilians in the communist countries must be anti-communist. When the facts are contrary to their belief in the theory, they choose to invent the facts to correct the theory.
And another comment:
we know them well, they know nothing about us.
But all in all, I can't make 100% sure they are not bots/brainwashed/part of the operation/mindless repetition... Any help to know the truth better instead of just speculations would be appreciated.
On the other hand, I know of one "user" on The Hill, that is a known Russian troll farm of some sort (not necessarily based in Russia entirely); I've caught it talking with itself in Russian, I've also seen it posting - simultaneously - both liberal and conservative talking points in different threads at the same moment in time. Tone, spelling, and grammar are also different - especially at different times of the day. It also goes offline every now and again. Others on the forums over there have noticed that same thing.
I've carried on multiple "conversation" threads with it, and it can be both intriguing, knowledgable, and ignorant depending on when you "catch" it (ie - whomever is typing on the other end).
I've made multiple attempts to figure it out - talking with it, at it, etc - and it has never disclaimed that it is a collective or not based in Russia. I am not sure what or who it is - some suspect some arm of the IRA, but it could be anything.
I don't call it a bot, because there are real humans behind it. I am not actually sure they are all Russian, because it's english is quite good at times, though I have seen hints of both British and American spellings, idioms, knowledge, etc. I suspect it's some kind of global operation, probably with paid actors of some sort.
I've only rarely have seen anything online in such forums or elsewhere that looks and acts like an actual "bot".
From what I know about the soviet satellite states, most people hated the soviets, but none would be stupid enough to say it in public. I wonder how much is the same in China.
> In issues like Hong Kong, it's quite rare to see any mainland Chinese supporting rioters in HK, no matter where they live.
It's clear that Taiwan supports the HK protesters, so I'm wondering what the other regions are really thinking, like Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, etc. Not what they are publicly saying, but what they are thinking privately. To be clear, I have no idea, that's why I'm asking.
What’s generally overlooked is how much stability is lost in such a repressive environment. Being the 1,000th person to riot is dangerous, being the 100 millionth is not. So, things can rapidly switch from everything seeming to be ok to total chaos almost overnight.
It's not news to Chinese as we call them 5毛 (50 cents)
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tweeting-through-great-firewa...
>Researchers from the International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have conducted a preliminary analysis of the dataset. Our research indicates that the information operation targeted at the protests appears to have been a relatively small and hastily assembled operation rather than a sophisticated information campaign planned well in advance.
>However, our research has also found that the accounts included in the information operation identified by Twitter were active in earlier information operations targeting political opponents of the Chinese government, including an exiled billionaire, a human rights lawyer, a bookseller and protestors in mainland China. The earliest of these operations date back to April 2017.
>This is significant because—if the attribution to state-backed actors made by Twitter is correct—it indicates that actors linked to the Chinese government may have been running covert information operations on Western social media platforms for at least two years.
>Research limitations: ICPC does not have access to the relevant data to independently verify that these accounts are linked to the Chinese government; this research proceeds on the assumption that Twitter’s attribution is correct. It is also important to note that Twitter has not released the methodology by which this dataset was selected, and the dataset may not represent a complete picture of Chinese state-linked information operations on Twitter.
Chinese foreign propaganda has been typically bad, but it's a little wild it's still this bad especially after two years. Almost makes attribution harder to believe.
https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2019-09/chiT...?
Very anemic effort, but I think Twitter also proactively suspended 200,000 accounts as well. The operation probably pivoted following the crackdown. Still it's a little difficult reconciling how low effort this is with the Chinese influence everywhere narrative.
>The ICPC’s preliminary research indicates that the information operation targeting the Hong Kong protests, as reflected in this dataset, was relatively small hastily constructed, and relatively unsophisticated. This suggests that the operation, which Twitter has identified as linked to state-backed actors, is likely to have been a rapid response to the unanticipated size and power of the Hong Kong protests rather than a campaign planned well in advance. The unsophisticated nature of the campaign suggests a crude understanding of information operations and rudimentary tradecraft that is a long way from the skill level demonstrated by other state actors. This may be because the campaigns were outsourced to a contractor, or may reflect a lack of familiarity on the part of Chinese state-backed actors when it comes to information operations on open social media platforms such as Twitter, as opposed to the highly proficient levels of control demonstrated by the Chinese government over heavily censored platforms such as WeChat or Weibo.
I'm really curious how Twitter attributed the campaign was state backed, something Facebook and Google did not claim. Were these accounts transparently VPNing from the mainland or was there something more sophisticated happening.
Extreme in degree or volume? Incompetent? Obvious?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
here's some images for folks who like pictures: http://www.chinatoday.com/fin/mon/
These accounts were pretty perplexing until this article spelled out what should have been obvious to me.
CNN/MSNBC/Fox news. They are all looking for easy stories with numbers they can quote. Twitter provides that justification. I hear their talking heads say things like "X has been tweeted 10,000 times" as if that means anything. They rely on twitter because they don't do real reporting anymore. I'd bet good money they don't have anyone on staff fluent in the relevant languages. Twitter+Google translate has replaced all the actual reporters.
> Who's being convinced by statements like that?
Perhaps, "convince" is the wrong verb to use for targets of disinformation campaigns?
The fact is "enough" people are susceptible to this stuff. It is worth doing because, sadly, critical thinking is rapidly becoming an educational luxury reserved for the elite. I don't know where all this will end up, but it's going to be ugly.
Why realize you've been fooled and exploited by people who don't really care about you, have excused their crimes, and then feel shitty because you don't dare to oppose them -- when you can just project all that on those who do oppose them? Then not seeing a silly and cheap slogan as silly and cheap becomes just another test of obedience, to excel at and be proud of. The Naked Emperor isn't just a story, it happens all the time. Identification with aggressors and projection of their bad qualities on their victims and those who oppose them is very common, or as Arno Gruen wrote, "the ubiquity of this phenomenon determines the course of human history".
https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeHongKongNow/comments/cya5z9/bas...
Who with a pulse would buy that? Those who are afraid of the responsibilities that come with not buying it. The continued violence is the lifeblood, not the propaganda; minus the movement, it all seems very banal and ridiculous, like Eichmann on trial.
Likewise, who would be so silly to think a downvote is an argument? Yet it's religiously done, and I wouldn't be suprised if to some people something being greyed out signals that it is not an okay opinion to have. Done consistently, it helps. It still needs to violence and the lies, the destruction of facts, but it's a useful addition to them.
So there are bots that have been posting "porn" for a bunch of years. And now they post political messages.
How does that influence anybody? Who subscribes to porn bots? I would have thought only other porn bots follow porn bots?
Can somebody link to an example of such a bot?
Clearly if they exist they must have some marginal use. It's like saying "who falls for nigerian prince scams?" or "who is influenced by ads?". Clearly some people are, otherwise they wouldn't be quite as popular. I'm sure some real people follow porn bots in order to... see porn.
As for the influence I think in isolation it's probably negligible, but if people get flooded by propaganda on social networks it may be quite efficient. "Everybody says it, it can't be completely wrong". The echo-chamber nature of many social networks probably plays into that too. Many people would probably be more likely to follow an obvious bot spamming propaganda that aligns with their beliefs than a real person holding a different opinion. For instance an obviously biased propaganda outlet like Prager U has 2 million followers on Youtube, I doubt all of those are bots.
Searching for contradictory viewpoints and actually managing to listen to the argument with an open mind takes effort. That's the big problem with most social media currently, they amplify this bias to the extreme. You can hold a fringe belief like "earth is flat" and still manage to find thousand of people agreeing with you, spending hours every day consuming flat earth content and avoiding any dissenting voice.
The article says accounts like this can be purchased cheaply from resellers.
"How does that influence anybody?"
I think the most effective use is in replies to other tweets. All the replies to a tweet are shown if you look at a tweet. You might look at the profile of some user who makes a tweet, but perhaps won't take such a deep look at their profile to see the earlier porn tweets.
High number of tweets, high number of followers, long time on the site would indicate 'actual person' rather than bot, or so you'd think without scrolling down far enough to see it filled with spam posts.
In my view bad actors don't have to just misinform, but make it more difficult to locate. Doing that seems shockingly easy, as much of our ability to locate data online is limited to brittle keywords.
Not to deviate, but in case anyone is curious: One of my attempts at mitigating this problem is via content hashes. Building a UX where the content hashes are often the point of reference and indexed by search engines might allow us to locate data and related data based on content hashes, rather than easily flooded semantic keys. Metadata pertaining to the hashes would also have to be provided for them to be useful, eg "related:04136e24". Lots of to discuss, but I'm trying to limit my off-topic, despite it being related to [dis|mis]information.
edit: I don't understand the downvote - can someone explain? Not sure exactly if something I said is factually incorrect? To be clear I wasn't saying Google was the thing running the bots, but that Google / search engines might be the point.
Not much different from the link farms of the early days of SEO which were never meant for human eyes.
Less about the credibility of the account, and more about creating a lot of buzz or, well, counter-buzz around another thread.
George Monbiot on that theme (outside China) recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebr...
As for the lack of sophistication: we tend to presume evil super-geniuses. What in fact makes for audacious acts (evil or otherwise) is disinhibition. The ability to act with immunity or impunity, or acting without regard or knowledge for possible consequences, is what tends to distinguish normal from both evil and heroic acts. When doing evil, the consequence is harm done to others, heroism and bravery are disregard to help others.
Ignorance, ideology, and legal shields are all forms of providing that immunity or impunity.
Of course people should also apply enough critical thinking to realize when the norm is utterly messed up, the masses are being a bunch of idiots or it starts to look very astroturfy.
Just like China likely has spies abroad fueling the counter protests.
> Claim: The US is supporting and encouraging Hong Kong protests.
> Verdict: Conspiracy theory without evidence.
> For years, pro-Kremlin media has used the narrative about anti-government protests being funded by the US. Examples include colour revolutions in post-soviet states, the “Arab Spring” revolts, and Euromaidan in 2014.
> The Hong Kong protests began in June 2019 because of a controversial extradition law that would allow for the transfer of suspects to face trial on the Chinese mainland.
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/the-us-is-supporting-and-encou...
[1] https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
Really no better than: "Let's discuss: Employee China stole something from the communal fridge." "Sure, but what about Employee US? I judged him stealing last year. I assume it very probable that Employee US is stealing from Employee China right now. Maybe that's why Employee China was so hungry, he was forced to steal, because Employee US started it. Maybe Employee China did not even steal anything, just took the blame for an unredeemable thief. Let's discuss and pontificate about that hypothetical instead!"
This wasn't the claim, so please don't quote it as it were. That's not a quotation from anyone here.
> later on
That's not how induction works. What we're doing is making a prediction. When we observe that something happens with a certain frequency, we judge that the probability of it occuring in the future is proportional to that frequency. I'm not saying the US is involved in HK. I'm saying it's justified to conclude that the US probably is involved in HK (and to be explicit: this is not equivalent to saying that the US did or did not cause HK.) People do not wait for an object to fall before they make their prediction and that's because we have sufficient historical data as well as explanatory theories to support our expecations.
> without any evidence
The evience is the history of the US's behavior and their current incentives to do so.
> arbitrary priors
The priors are not arbitrary. They are consistent and theoretically accounted for by several branches of IR theory.
> conspiracy theory
Geopolitical neorealism, for example, is not a conspiracy theory, it's one of the leading schools of thought in IR theory at the moment.
> propaganda with an aim to erode trust in the US
What "erodes trust" in the US is the US's behavior, not pointing out facts about it.
> stealing last year.
We're not talking about one incident. We're talking about an extensively documented history amounting to a consistent pattern of behavior which is trivially explainable using mainstream IR theory.
Nobody is denying what China does. To point out additional facts is not to contradict any other facts.
One is not justified in belieiving anything one pleases. There are things which are justified and things which are not and a coherent epistemology distinguishes between the two.
It doesn't. It's just a summary, akin to a comment.
> evidence for
It wasn't intended to be evidnence for anything but a reminder of the pattern of behavior that the US is throughoughly documented (elsewhere) to have engaged in over the years.
China is simply a much bigger power than the UK these days (in fairness, as it should be).
I'm not a fan of our government at all, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how they've managed to stay out of this situation (publicly, at least).
Weird that he's not tweeting about it though. Maybe because a standoff lacks the immediacy of specific punctuated incidents.
And ultimately it's an issue between one and a half foreign countries that doesn't really impact US interests so much compared to much larger issues with China.