China’s spin loses grip Twitter ban on ads, fake accounts

THE Chinese Government’s propaganda machine has been buying ads on Facebook and Twitter to share its version of the Hong Kong protests.

Promoted tweets and sponsored Facebook ads have been run by a number of Englishlanguage Chinese state media outlets including China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, China Plus News and China Radio International.

While both Facebook and Twitter are banned on the mainland, it represents the Government’s desire to take control of how the Hong Kong protests are spun – not just to the country’s own citizens but around the world.

“See the truth,” reads one Facebook post, accompanied with images of Hong Kong protesters appearing to engage in violence and disruptive behaviour.

One of the images refers to the demonstrators as “the Hong Kong cockroaches”.

Chinese state media’s coverage of the demonstrations has largely targeted mainland citizens and demonstrators in the southern territory through inspiring nationalism in the former and threatening the latter.

But the tweets and Facebook posts appear to be directed at social media users in Western countries – not just mainland citizens living abroad, but everybody.

For example, a Facebook ad by Xinhua News challenges US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “fly to Hong Kong to see what the true facts are” in response to her remarks critical of the Chinese Government’s suppression of the demonstrators.

Another post featured a video called “Hong Kong in the eyes of an Australian”. It included footage of an unnamed Australian traveller, who went viral when he lashed out at protesters after missing his flight during airport demonstrations.

In the viral video, the man told the demonstrators to “get a job” and said “Hong Kong is a part of China”.

Social media platforms have since announced against such posts.

Twitter said it would no longer accept advertisements from “state-controlled news media entities”.

“We want to protect healthy discourse and open conversation,” the network said on its website.

“We believe that there is a difference between engaging in conversation with accounts you choose to follow and the content you see from advertisers in your Twitter experience which may be from accounts you’re not currently following.” action

The company said the new policy would only apply to “news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state”, not including taxpayer-funded entities or independent public broadcasters. Twitter did not name any Chinese state media outlets directly.

But it did come just hours after the company acknowledged it had identified a network of 936 active accounts that “were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the

Legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground”. It also said there were about 200,000 “larger, spammy” accounts. Facebook subsequently identified about a dozen pages and groups that were tied to Chinese activity regarding Hong K NEW ORDER: Facebook and Twitter have banned fake news and China-sponsored attacks about the Hong Kong protests. Twitter has banned advertising from all state-run media going to people who aren’t following those outlets.