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China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

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Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#21
Full report:

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.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#22
post #11
post #2

I don't understand it. 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?

>Who subscribes to porn bots? I would have thought only other porn bots follow porn bots? 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 p…

PragerU isn't obvious to most people that's what's insidious about it. It's a fake "university" for people who are too ignorant or low intelligent to know what a real one looks like. Compare PragerU to "A People's History of the United States" book. Both are highly politically biased, both oppose "mainstream" education, but one is intellectually much better than the other. Discerning which requires higher level thinking many people lack.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#23
I've seen something similar in some extremist bot accounts, where the tweet picture and text has a titillating and sexual tone (like catfishing) but includes an unrelated political hashtag at the end. These bots try to get certain hashtags trending without the users who fav the tweets realizing that.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#24
post #9

I've seen a few of these, they appear in the replies to threads created by BBC journos saying things like (in translation): "support the central government" These accounts were pretty perplexing until this article spelled out what should have been obvious to me.

Who's being convinced by statements like that?

It's not really an argument, but it could make people think they're more of an outlier in doubting the government. Once you doubt your convictions you might start to reconsider the arguments you've already been exposed to.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#25

With all that happening in Hong Kong, i wonder why UK and US are not at all involved?

Flip it around and say the US Virgin Islands decided they wanted to be communist. Would China send troops or "advisors" to support them?

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#26

With all that happening in Hong Kong, i wonder why UK and US are not at all involved?

Normally the US govt is too afraid of Chinese imports to criticize China (look at history of Taiwan). Trump of court is a wildcard on Twitter but his administration policies and diplomacy aren't nearly as radical. But we do have the tariff issue at the moment, which might have some background connections.

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.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#27

With all that happening in Hong Kong, i wonder why UK and US are not at all involved?

Flip it around and say the US Virgin Islands decided they wanted to be communist. Would China send troops or "advisors" to support them?

Yes? China has an active foreign influence mission.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#28

With all that happening in Hong Kong, i wonder why UK and US are not at all involved?

When the West intervenes in these matters they get called colonialists. When they don't intervene, people wonder why they don't do anything.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#29

With all that happening in Hong Kong, i wonder why UK and US are not at all involved?

UK government is in the middle of collapsing in on itself, so anything non-brexit related has been pushed far on the backburner. I think even if you had an emergency legislation to feed the orphans or something it would still be ignored for the next few weeks.

Weeks? Everything has been on hold for 3 years at this point.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#30
post #18

Sounds like a classic lowest-bidder government contractor situation. "Sure, we have 100,000 accounts, and we'll charge 1.25 RMB per tweet per account." "Fantastic! You get the contract!" "Oh shit we need to find 100,000 accounts fast and cheap."

"I met this girl on the internet, she said she'd do anything for 1.25 RMB. Anything? Really?! ...So I got her to post tweets supporting the Chinese government."

Two girls, one umbrella.
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