Very anemic effort, but I think Twitter also proactively suspended 200,000 accounts as well. The operation probably pivoted following the crackdown. Still it's a little difficult reconciling how low effort this is with the Chinese influence everywhere narrative.
>The ICPC’s preliminary research indicates that the information operation targeting the Hong Kong protests, as reflected in this dataset, was relatively small hastily constructed, and relatively unsophisticated. This suggests that the operation, which Twitter has identified as linked to state-backed actors, is likely to have been a rapid response to the unanticipated size and power of the Hong Kong protests rather than a campaign planned well in advance. The unsophisticated nature of the campaign suggests a crude understanding of information operations and rudimentary tradecraft that is a long way from the skill level demonstrated by other state actors. This may be because the campaigns were outsourced to a contractor, or may reflect a lack of familiarity on the part of Chinese state-backed actors when it comes to information operations on open social media platforms such as Twitter, as opposed to the highly proficient levels of control demonstrated by the Chinese government over heavily censored platforms such as WeChat or Weibo.
I'm really curious how Twitter attributed the campaign was state backed, something Facebook and Google did not claim. Were these accounts transparently VPNing from the mainland or was there something more sophisticated happening.
dirtyid|6 years ago
https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2019-09/chiT...?
Very anemic effort, but I think Twitter also proactively suspended 200,000 accounts as well. The operation probably pivoted following the crackdown. Still it's a little difficult reconciling how low effort this is with the Chinese influence everywhere narrative.
>The ICPC’s preliminary research indicates that the information operation targeting the Hong Kong protests, as reflected in this dataset, was relatively small hastily constructed, and relatively unsophisticated. This suggests that the operation, which Twitter has identified as linked to state-backed actors, is likely to have been a rapid response to the unanticipated size and power of the Hong Kong protests rather than a campaign planned well in advance. The unsophisticated nature of the campaign suggests a crude understanding of information operations and rudimentary tradecraft that is a long way from the skill level demonstrated by other state actors. This may be because the campaigns were outsourced to a contractor, or may reflect a lack of familiarity on the part of Chinese state-backed actors when it comes to information operations on open social media platforms such as Twitter, as opposed to the highly proficient levels of control demonstrated by the Chinese government over heavily censored platforms such as WeChat or Weibo.
I'm really curious how Twitter attributed the campaign was state backed, something Facebook and Google did not claim. Were these accounts transparently VPNing from the mainland or was there something more sophisticated happening.