This week, Twitter and Facebook removed networks from thousands of accounts linked to China, part of propaganda operations to promote the Chinese regime’s versions of the cases of human rights abuses against Uighurs and the pandemic.
China’s propaganda operations involve fake profiles that make publications which are then shared by a large number of “inauthentic” profiles by regime officials and the Chinese state media.
Propaganda about Uighurs in Xinjiang
Twitter closed more than 2,000 accounts linked to the regime in China that were used in a propaganda operation described by experts as “disgraceful”.
The operation used false images and false profiles of Uighurs to promote fabricated testimonies about the life of the ethnic minority in the Xinjiang region, and thus try to minimize evidence of serious human rights abuses against this population in China, which include allegations of forced internment in China. fields of “re-education”, surveillance, cultural assimilation, forced labor and mandatory sterilizations. China denies all charges despite evidence.
In videos posted by the fake accounts in response to Western media reports, alleged Uighurs spoke of their “happy life” in Xinjiang. Most of the tweets were made in response to posts with evidence of abuses in Xinjang, with the hashtag #StopXinjiangRumours (Stop the Xinjiang Rumors).
According to analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) research group, two networks linked to the Chinese regime sought to influence the opinion of Xinjiang by the international public and by Chinese living in other countries.
The networks, made up of more than 2,000 profiles and with more than 60,000 publications, “have never achieved significant organic engagement on Twitter, although they have had remarkable interaction with accounts of Communist Party of China diplomats,” the ASPI report states.
Twitter is banned in China, but diplomats and other officials of the Chinese regime often use the service to promote Beijing’s interests.
fake swiss biologist
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, this week removed a disinformation network in China that made claims about the origins of the new coronavirus. Chinese propagandists created an online disinformation campaign centered on the profile of a person who claimed to be a Swiss biologist but who was not real.
Facebook researchers reported that posts from this profile were used to mislead the public about the origins of the pandemic.
The character “Dr. Wilson Edwards” wrote publications saying the United States was unduly pressuring the World Health Organization (WHO) to blame China for the Covid-19 pandemic.
Meta said it had removed more than 600 accounts linked to this network, which contained a “coordinated group” of Chinese state officials.
“We removed 524 Facebook profiles, 20 pages, four groups and 86 Instagram accounts. This network originated in China and targeted global English-speaking audiences in the US and UK, as well as Chinese-speakers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tibet,” said the company.
The Swiss Embassy in Beijing clarified in August that the doctor was not a real person. In a post on Twitter, the country’s representation said that “probably these are fake news, and we ask the Chinese press and internet users to delete the posts”.
Facebook researchers said on Wednesday they found evidence the person had been invented by a Chinese cybersecurity company.
The platform tracked the creation of the account and reached Information Technology company Sichuan Silence, from China. The company’s website, which claims to provide information security services, lists China’s Ministry of Public Security among its customers.
The fake doctor has not had much repercussion in the West, but his claims have been amplified by several accounts by people working for the Chinese state, as well as by Chinese state media.
Several fake accounts also reposted the posts, while almost no authentic accounts did.
The Chinese state press echoed the allegations of the “Swiss biologist”. People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, ran an article in July – which is still on the air – talking about the US “intimidation” of the WHO.
“A European biologist went public with the startling information that a WHO advisory group to track the origins of pathogens, including the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, would become a ‘political tool,'” the text states. from People’s Daily.
The article also said that biologist “Edwards” said his fellow researchers were under “enormous pressure” and “intimidation” from the US after the release of the findings of the joint investigation between China and the WHO into the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan.
Meta has included the details of the operation in its report of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” published this week, which also reveals that disinformation networks in Belarus, Palestine and Poland have been excluded.
According to the company, the fake doctor’s account was created on July 24, hours before his first posts on the social network. About 200 accounts that shared the post as soon as it was published had profile photos created by artificial intelligence programs.
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