Image: pixabay.com
Twitter has suspended two large Chinese networks of accounts that violated its platform manipulation and spam policies, Stanford Internet Observatory reports. ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has analyzed the content of these networks.
The first dataset, named CNHU consisted of 2,016 accounts created between April 2019 and February 2021. The CNHU has links to the Chinese government. The content that CNHU shared focused heavily on ‘Xinjiang’ and echoed the official CCP narratives.
The second dataset, CNCC, was attributed to Changyu Culture, a production firm connected to the Xinjiang provincial government. The Xinjiang regional authority had contracted Changyu Culture to create videos of Uyghurs supporting the Chinese Communist Party. Youtube has since suspended the Changyu Culture YouTube channel. The CNCC dataset consisted of 112 accounts and 35,924 tweets. 101 of the 112 accounts had few or zero followers.
Both networks messaged extensively about ‘Xinjiang’ and how well the Chinese government treats the Uyghurs, Stanford Internet Observatory states. Most of the content and hashtags were in English. The accounts emphasized that Uyghurs are happy in ‘Xinjiang’, that political re-education has reduced the threat of terrorism in the region, and that Western media and politicians are a bunch of hypocritical liars.