Twitter is currently experiencing a wave of offensive content from China aimed at censoring news about widespread protests due to strict COVID-19 restrictions in the country.
For example, if you search for any Chinese city on Twitter using official Chinese characters, you’ll see endless tweets showing pornographic and escort services content from bot accounts, making it impossible to get results related to the topic you’re looking for. Bot content, which is suspected to belong to the Chinese government, makes it difficult for people in the country to see the news and for Chinese citizens to protest.
According to a report by a China-based data analyst, there has been a significant increase in offensive tweets on the microblogging platform for the past three days.
Thread: Search for Beijing/Shanghai/other cities in Chinese on Twitter and you'll mostly see ads for escorts/porn/gambling, drowning out legitimate search results.
Data analysis in this thread suggests that there has been a *significant* uptick in these spam tweets. pic.twitter.com/Ao46g2ILzf— Air-Moving Device (@AirMovingDevice) November 28, 2022
As discussions of nationwide protests were harshly censored on Chinese social media platforms, protesters turned to foreign platforms like Twitter and Telegram for communication. However, these platforms are also banned in the country and hence people are forced to use VPNs.
Just days ago, the Chinese province of Zhengzhou witnessed a violent clash between hundreds of Foxconn workers and police over delayed bonuses and concerns over the spread of COVID-19.
A Twitter employee told The Washington Post that the company is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it. However, as new CEO Elon Musk fired the company’s Trust & Safety team, it’s still unclear how the company can effectively combat malicious behavior.
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