Twitter says it proactively suspended ~200K “spammy” accounts, before they became “substantially active”, alongside its initial ban of 936 China-linked accounts
Instead of a narrative of Hong Kong prospering under Chinese rule, it has just shown itself like a bully https://www.nytimes.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : Working on something longer with @noUpside on this, but I'll make a short-term meta-comment. Two of the three relevant companies have made public statements. Neither have realistic prospects in the PRC, the other does. From the US media reaction silence might be the best move. https://twitter.com/... Kenneth Roth / @kenroth : Beyond China's abuse of Twitter to spread disinformation about Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests, China was also using Twitter to lie about its detention of one million Uighur and other Turkic Muslims for “re-education.” https://theintercept.com/... https://twitter.com/... Li Yuan / @liyuan6 : Remember all the fuss about the China Dream? Beijing wants greater sway over global public opinion. Instead, its propaganda outlets help run up a huge soft power deficit when confronted with the biggest challenge to its rule in 30 years. https://www.nytimes.com/... Donie O'Sullivan / @donie : Not just Hong Kong accounts. Among the accounts Twitter says are linked to China is @LibertyLionNews. Its bio: “Conservative News from the USA and Abroad. #Catholic Defender of the Constitution of the United States. #Qanon #MAGA #BUILDTHEWALL #TRUMP #2A #1A” Profile pic: pic.twitter.com/FMkh3QczZR @jc_mittelstadt : “China said on Tuesday it had a right to put out its own views after Twitter and Facebook said they had dismantled a state-backed social media campaign originating in mainland China that sought to undermine protests in Hong Kong” https://www.reuters.com/... Christian Christensen / @chrchristensen : Note language used by Twitter when addressing suspension of accounts used by Chinese govt re HK protests: “coordinated attempts to manipulate the public conversation.” Using that definition, tell me how Trump/WH tweets containing blatant lies don't fall into same category. pic.twitter.com/UgcgrD5uEM Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : I guess China will tell their citizens to boycott Twitter and Facebook in response to the ban Very sad! 😭😭😭 https://twitter.com/... Tim Shorrock / @timothys : This “huge news” deserves a little more skepticism. Otherwise it's a nice plug for two American corporate giants. https://twitter.com/... Adam Schiff / @repadamschiff : Twitter and Facebook announced they found and removed a large network of Chinese government-backed accounts spreading disinformation about the protests in Hong Kong. This is just one example of how authoritarian regimes use social media to manipulate people, at home and abroad. https://twitter.com/... @cnn : Twitter announced that it would no longer accept advertisements from “state-controlled news media entities,” though accounts affected by the new rule can still use Twitter as regular users https://www.cnn.com/... Anna Fifield / @annafifield : Huge news: Twitter and Facebook have taken action against China for using hundreds of fake accounts to sow discord during the Hong Kong protests, the first time the social media giants had identified Beijing directly for spearheading such an operation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @theintercept : A review of Twitter advertisements from between June and August this year showed that the social media giant promoted more than 50 English-language tweets from the Global Times, a Chinese state media organization. https://theintercept.com/... Sana Saeed / @sanasaeed : You guys didn't seem to be so concerned with the clear Hindutva bots (more than likely state-backed) out in full force over the last two weeks in particular — especially the ones threatening genocide, spreading demonstrably false information. How come? How does this work? https://twitter.com/... Lee Fang / @lhfang : Are you telling me all those Twitter accounts with 0 followers and ten random numbers in the handle, that responded “China #1” to every article about Hong Kong weren't authentic? https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : Lots of lessons from this episode, but one might be an reinforcement of how Russia represents “easy mode” for platforms doing state attribution. It's a lot harder when the actor is financially critical, like the PRC or India. @cnbcnow : BREAKING: Twitter says it has uncovered a “significant state-backed information operation” originating from inside China aimed “deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong.” https://www.cnbc.com/... Donie O'Sullivan / @donie : The account had more than 180,000 followers. Was set up more than 10 years ago. h/t @DarrenLinvill Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : A Chinese government-created Qanon account. Yeehaw! https://twitter.com/... Kyle Bass / @jkylebass : Twitter and Facebook have determined that chinese state-run operations have been using their services to propagate lies to deliberately influence political discord against HK. Maybe Susan Thornton or Swaine should be hired as their lobbyists to write another pro-ccp letter #china https://twitter.com/... Rat King / @mikeisaac : the scale of the campaign across twitter (200,000 accounts!) is interesting compared to those on Facebook (a dozen or so pages/accts/groups, affecting about 16k people) i guess there's a net benefit to the State in convincing westerners that HK protesters are violent See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This disclosure deepens [[a:945001|Twitter's accusation that China ran a coordinated campaign to sow political discord around the Hong Kong protests]]: on top of the initial 936-account ban, Twitter says it moved against roughly 200K more accounts preemptively, before they became substantially active — a shift from removing networks after they operate to dismantling them while still dormant.
The announcement also lands amid awkward timing for Twitter's own ad business: the same disclosure follows reporting that the Global Times' English-language tweets ran as paid promotions between June and August, and Alex Stamos noted publicly that two of the three relevant platforms have no realistic prospects in China anyway — raising the cost of staying quiet.
First-order effects
- Roughly 200K pre-activity accounts are now off Twitter, and the 936-account network behind the Hong Kong operation is fully removed — with Facebook named as a partner in dismantling the same China-origin operation.
- State-controlled news media lose access to Twitter's ad inventory entirely under the newly announced ban on state-media advertising, directly cutting off the Global Times promotion channel.
Second-order effects
- Other platforms face pressure to match both the preemptive-suspension posture and the state-media ad ban, since Facebook's participation in the joint takedown sets a cross-platform precedent rather than a Twitter-only one.
- Beijing-backed outlets lose their paid amplification route on Western platforms, forcing state information operations toward organic coordination and fresh account creation — which is exactly the behavior Twitter says its proactive suspensions now target.
Third-order effects
- If the cadence holds — Twitter's September 2019 batch spanning China, UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Ecuador and the June 2020 removal of 32K+ Russia-, China-, and Turkey-linked accounts followed this same template — routine public takedown disclosures become an institutionalized channel through which platforms adjudicate state influence operations.
- Preemptive suspension of not-yet-active accounts points toward platforms policing intent inferred from network signatures rather than content, a structural shift with unresolved questions about appeal and evidence for accounts that never posted.
The trend: Platform trust-and-safety teams are institutionalizing preemptive, jointly coordinated purges of state-linked account networks, with each disclosure batch setting the disclosure standard for the next.