Twitter on Thursday said it removed more than 170,000 accounts tied to a Beijing-backed influence operation that deceptively spread messages favorable to the Chinese government, including some about the coronavirus. Twitter, along with researchers who analyzed the accounts, said the network was largely an echo chamber of fake accounts without much further traction. Twitter said the Chinese network had links to an earlier state-backed operation dismantled last year by Twitter, Facebook and Google’s YouTube that had been pushing misleading narratives about political dynamics in Hong Kong. The U.S. State Department said in May it had found a network of inauthentic Twitter accounts with “highly probable” linkages to China disseminating false coronavirus claims. A Twitter spokeswoman on Thursday said the network it removed was not related to what the State Department had identified.

Source: Standard Digital June 12, 2020 12:11 UTC