6/17/24, 5:50 AM Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation in Hong Kong - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/technology/hong-kong-protests-
china-disinformation-facebook-twitter.html

Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading

Disinformation in Hong Kong
By Kate Conger
Aug. 19, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO — China has adopted Russia’s playbook for spreading disinformation
on Facebook and Twitter, deploying those tactics in its increasingly heated information
war over the protests that have convulsed Hong Kong.

In recent weeks, Facebook and Twitter accounts that originated in China acted in a
coordinated fashion to amplify messages and images that portrayed Hong Kong’s
protesters as violent and extreme, the two social media companies said on Monday. On
Facebook, one recent post from a China-linked account likened the protesters to ISIS
fighters. And a Twitter message said, “We don’t want you radical people in Hong Kong.
Just get out of here!”

Facebook and Twitter said they had now removed the accounts, the first time that the
social media companies have had to take down accounts linked to disinformation in
China.

Facebook said it eliminated seven pages, three Facebook Groups and five accounts
involved in the disinformation campaign about Hong Kong protesters. Twitter deleted 936
accounts and said it would ban state-backed media from promoting tweets after China
Daily and other state-backed publications placed ads on its service that suggested the
protesters were sponsored by Western interests and were becoming violent.

“These accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in
Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest
movement on the ground,” Twitter said in a statement. “Based on our intensive
investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-
backed operation.”

The removal of the China-backed accounts signal an escalation in the global

disinformation wars. In 2015 and 2016, Russia pioneered disinformation techniques when
it used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media to disseminate inflammatory
messages intended to divide Americans in the 2016 presidential election. Since then,
governments in many other countries — including Bangladesh, Iran and Venezuela —
have also used Facebook and Twitter to sow discord at home and abroad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/technology/hong-kong-protests-china-disinformation-facebook-twitter.html 1/6
6/17/24, 5:50 AM Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation in Hong Kong - The New York Times

China has been less visible about using Facebook and Twitter to spread disinformation,
researchers said. Both services are blocked in the country and people instead spend time
on homegrown social media services and messaging apps like WeChat and Weibo. The
Communist Party has largely not needed Western social media because it already exerts
tight control over state-backed media and content inside the country’s so-called Great
Firewall.

But the recent Facebook and Twitter activity over the Hong Kong protests suggests that
Beijing will use those services to spread its messaging outside the Great Firewall when it
deems it necessary. Facebook and Twitter are not blocked in Hong Kong and are widely
used. Some 4.7 million people in the territory log into Facebook at least once a month,
while 448,000 use Twitter, according to eMarketer.

Asked about the actions by Twitter and Facebook, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Tuesday that Chinese media outlets were doing
nothing underhanded in sharing their views about the Hong Kong protests.

“I think it‘s entirely reasonable for Chinese media to use social media platforms abroad to
engage with the public to explain China’s policies and tell China’s story,” Mr. Geng told a
regular news conference in Beijing. “I don’t understand why certain companies or certain
people have such an intense reaction. Maybe it’s poked holes in their own shortcomings.”

China may have previously dipped its toe into using Western social media to destabilize
elections in Taiwan starting in 2018, said Graham Brookie, the director of the Atlantic
Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. He added that China’s disinformation campaigns
tended to be less wide-ranging than Russia’s and hew tightly to a set of foreign policy
goals, including tying Taiwan and Hong Kong closely to the mainland.

“The Chinese have been watching what works and what doesn’t in the context of Russian
information operations,” Mr. Brookie said. “China is testing the waters on what is effective
and what they can get away with.”

The disinformation campaign against the Hong Kong protests also stands out because
many of the tweets were written in English and targeted a global audience.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/technology/hong-kong-protests-china-disinformation-facebook-twitter.html 2/6
6/17/24, 5:50 AM Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation in Hong Kong - The New York Times

Screenshots from fake accounts on Facebook involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior.

The translation in final panel is: Hong Kong cockroach chaos. via Facebook

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/technology/hong-kong-protests-china-disinformation-facebook-twitter.html 3/6
6/17/24, 5:50 AM Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation in Hong Kong - The New York Times
A screenshot via Facebook of a fake account involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. It
says “Protesters. ISIS fighters. What’s the difference?” via Facebook

A screenshot via Twitter of a fake account that Twitter said

originated within China as a state-backed operation to sow
political discord. via Twitter

“I think they are trying to reach English speakers in Hong Kong and the larger audience
of people watching,” said Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy
Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Many of the Twitter accounts involved in the Hong Kong campaign were recently created
and did not have large followings, said Renee DiResta, the Mozilla Fellow in media,
misinformation and trust. “It reveals almost a lack of sophistication in terms of how China
is thinking about developing this outward capability,” she said.

Since the Hong Kong protests began in June to demonstrate against an extradition bill,
the movement has evolved. On Sunday, the city was the scene of another huge march,
which organizers said brought out 1.7 million people — or nearly one in four of the total
population of around seven million — who walked in defiance of a police ban.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/technology/hong-kong-protests-china-disinformation-facebook-twitter.html 4/6
6/17/24, 5:50 AM Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation in Hong Kong - The New York Times

China has aggressively stoked anti-Western and nationalist sentiments around the
protests and begun branding the demonstrations as a prelude to terrorism. Hong Kong
workers and billionaires have also jumped into the fray. In ads in several local
newspapers, the tycoon Li Ka Shing recently pushed readers to “love China, love Hong
Kong, love yourself” and “overcome anger with love.” And employees at accounting firms
in Hong Kong have taken out ads supporting the demonstrations.

Twitter said it discovered the China-linked accounts during an investigation that spanned
several weeks. The accounts worked together to blast out messages that could undermine
the Hong Kong protests, with some of the accounts using Twitter from specific unblocked
internet protocol addresses, the company said. Since Twitter is not permitted in China, an
unblocked IP address is typically a telltale sign that the accounts were approved by the
government, researchers said.

Although most of the disinformation was spread by the 936 accounts that Twitter
eventually took down, the company said it also uncovered a broader group of 200,000
accounts. Those sprang up once Twitter began banning some of the earlier accounts; the
majority of them were stopped before they were able to spread more messages, the
company said.

Among the messages that the China-linked accounts posted was a tweet suggesting
protesters were “taking benefits from the bad guys.” Another claimed the protesters had
“ulterior motives.”

Twitter said it would give state-sponsored media a month to leave its advertising
platform before its ban on promoted tweets from state-backed media goes into effect. The
ban expands on the company’s efforts to combat Russian disinformation. In 2017, Twitter
banned RT and Sputnik, international news outlets supported by the Kremlin, from
advertising on its service.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook said it would not ban ads from state-owned media. The company
said it would “continue to look at our policies as they relate to state-owned media” and
also closely examine ads that were flagged to it so it could determine if they violated its
policies. China’s government, through its state media agencies, has been a big buyer of
ads on Facebook, The New York Times has reported.

Twitter alerted Facebook to the coordinated China-linked social media activity in July, a
Facebook spokeswoman said. The Facebook pages that the company identified in its own
investigation typically posed as news organizations and were followed by about 15,500
accounts. Most of the pages were created in 2018 or later, with the earliest page flagged in
the investigation set up in 2016. While the people behind the activity tried to hide their
identities, Facebook said it “found links to individuals associated with the Chinese
government.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/technology/hong-kong-protests-china-disinformation-facebook-twitter.html 5/6
6/17/24, 5:50 AM Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation in Hong Kong - The New York Times

“Protesters, ISIS fighters,” one of the Facebook posts said, “What’s the difference?”
Another called the protesters “Hong Kong cockroaches.”

Follow Kate Conger on Twitter: @kateconger.

Mike Isaac contributed reporting from San Francisco, Tiffany Hsu from New York and Chris Buckley from Beijing.

Interested in All Things Tech? Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley. And sign up for the personal tech
newsletter for advice and tips on the technology changing how you live.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/technology/hong-kong-protests-china-disinformation-facebook-twitter.html 6/6