Supreme Tech Quisling

Twitter Helps Beijing Push Agenda Abroad Despite Ban in China

• Twitter employees train Chinese officials to amplify message
• Push persists despite recent ban on ads from Chinese state media

By Shelly Banjo and Sarah Frier


Twitter Inc. removed hundreds of accounts linked to the Chinese government this week meant to undermine the legitimacy of Hong Kong protests. 

It also said it would no longer allow state media to purchase ads on its platform.
What Twitter didn’t mention in its series of blog posts this week was the increasing number of Chinese officials, diplomats, media, and government agencies using the social media service to push Beijing’s political agenda abroad. 

Twitter employees actually help these Chinese get their messages across, a practice that hasn’t been previously reported. 

The company provides Chinese officials with support, like verifying their accounts and training them on how to amplify messages, including with the use of hashtags.
This is despite a ban on Twitter in China, which means most people on the mainland can’t use the service or see opposing views from abroad. 

Still, in the last few days, an account belonging to the Chinese ambassador to Panama took to Twitter to share videos painting Hong Kong protesters as vigilantes. 

He also responded to Panamanian users’ tweets about the demonstrations, which began in opposition to a bill allowing extraditions to China.
China’s ambassador to the U.S. tweeted that “radical protesters” were eroding the rule of law embraced by the #silentmajority of Hong Kongers. 

The Chinese Mission to the United Nations’ Twitter account asked protesters to “stop the violence, for a better #Hong Kong,” while social media accounts of Chinese embassies in Manila, India and the Maldives shared articles from China’s state media blaming Westerners for disrupting the city. “Separatists in Hong Kong kept in close contact with foreign elements,” one story says above a photo of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.
“We know China is adept at controlling domestic information, but now they are trying to use Western platforms like Twitter to control the narrative on the international stage,” said Jacob Wallis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre.
It’s unclear if any of these diplomats were set up on the service by Twitter, but the state-backed attempt to discredit Hong Kong protesters continues to reach millions of global Twitter users. 

In many cases, the Chinese officials are promoting views similar to those in 936 accounts Twitter banned on Monday.
The practice of supporting Chinese officials who use Twitter to spread the Communist Party agenda highlights how difficult it is for the social media company to balance its commitment to root out disinformation and allow the expression of varying opinions. 

It also raises concerns around why Twitter is helping Beijing make its case to a global audience when the service is banned in China, where dissenting voices are prohibited and officials sometimes detain users accessing the platform through virtual private networks.
Twitter’s recent effort to curtail China’s government-directed misinformation campaigns, which provoked outrage from state media, seems at odds with continuing to welcome pro-Beijing accounts that attack Hong Kong protesters, said Wallis.
“There’s a clear tension for Twitter here having seen that Beijing is willing to use the platform in deceptive and manipulative ways, whilst desiring to use the platform for state diplomacy,” Wallis said.
The tweets are part of a broader campaign by China to reshape the narrative over Hong Kong, particularly in Western nations more sympathetic to the democratic aspirations of protesters. 

China this week also sent a 43-page letter to senior editors at foreign news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg.
Twitter says Chinese officials and politicians deserve a voice in the public discourse, as long as they follow its rules and policies. 

The company has used the same argument to defend hosting tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump, which some users have questioned. 

Twitter has said it aims to “advance global, public conversation” and that public figures “play a critical role in that conversation because of their out-sized impact on our society,“ in a blog post last year.
On Monday, Twitter said in a blog post that it would block more than 900 accounts because they appeared to be part of a “coordinated state-backed operation” to “sow political discord in Hong Kong.” 

The accounts accessed Twitter from unblocked IP addresses within mainland China, it said, suggesting the state condoned their activities. 

Twitter also said it would stop accepting advertising from state-controlled media: “Any affected accounts will be free to continue to use Twitter to engage in public conversation, just not our advertising products.”
Twitter’s embrace of Chinese officials on the platform also highlights how some American tech companies try to make inroads in the enormous market, despite government restrictions on their services. 

Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has repeatedly expressed a desire to enter China. 

Twitter oversees the China business from offices in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Like Google, Facebook and other sites blocked in China, Twitter sells advertising to Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. that are trying to reach overseas users. Before Twitter’s policy change this week, it had also sold ad space to Chinese state media companies that used them to push the narrative that Hong Kong protests were orchestrated by foreign forces and angry mobs unrepresentative of the city’s majority.
Facebook said it has trained Chinese state media entities to use its services, but declined to comment on whether it also works with government officials. 

“We provide a standard set of guidance and best practice training to groups around the world including governments, political parties, media outlets, and non-profits so they can manage their Facebook Pages,” the company said in a statement, noting that their guidance is publicly available online.
YouTube, part of Alphabet Inc., doesn’t have a specific policy that bars state-funded media, but the company’s ad policies require government-funded channels to be labeled as such. 

This week, state media including the Global Times published videos about the Hong Kong demonstrations, including an interview with a police officer who said he was “critically injured by violent protesters.” 

The company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the matter.
Both Twitter and Facebook have established programs to make sure public figures around the world sign up for their sites and understand how to use them effectively. 

The idea is that people who have a following — athletes, actors or singers — will create interest for their other users in the website. 

For years, the work has extended to politics, with the social networks signing up and training political figures. 

For example, Facebook has embedded staff with or trained Trump; Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, known for encouraging extrajudicial killings; and Germany’s anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in how to most effectively use the platform, Bloomberg News has reported.
Twitter and Facebook have implemented terms of service that ban certain practices, including bot accounts that appear to be real people and promote misinformation. 

But government officials and state media still have wide latitude to say what they want.
“If Trump is going to use Twitter to deliver his message to the Chinese government, then it makes perfect sense China should be using this medium to send signals back,” said Samm Sacks, cybersecurity policy and China digital economy fellow at think tank New America. 

“But then we get into this coordinated state misinformation domain and it raises problematic questions around what is propaganda and what is misinformation.”