Twitter and Facebook accuse China of manipulation campaign
Twitter and Facebook have accused China of using its online platforms to deliberately stir up sentiment against the democracy movement in Hong Kong. Twitter declared on Monday that the short message service had uncovered a "state-supported" information campaign against the protest movement.
Numerous user accounts had acted in a "coordinated manner" to spread messages about the protests in Hong Kong. As a result, 936 accounts were blocked.
Twitter is blocked in mainland China. According to the short message service, however, virtual private networks were used to conceal the user's actual location.
Facebook said it had blocked several pages, groups and user accounts with connections to China following a tip-off from Twitter.
"Deceptive tactics" such as fake user accounts were used to spread messages about Hong Kong, explained Facebook's head of online security Nathaniel Gleicher. Investigations had revealed that there were links between the authors and the Chinese government.
Mass demonstrations for more democracy and against Beijing's growing influence have been taking place in Hong Kong for weeks. The Chinese government has recently made increasingly blatant threats to the demonstrators in the Special Administrative Region. (SDA)
