Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests

[emily]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... -protests/


For hours, links to adult content overwhelmed other posts from cities where dramatic rallies escalated

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter’s radically reduced anti-propaganda team grappled on Sunday with a flood of nuisance content in China that researchers said was aimed at reducing the flow of news about stunning widespread protests against coronavirus restrictions.

Numerous Chinese-language accounts, some dormant for months or years, came to life early Sunday and started spamming the service with links to escort services and other adult offerings alongside city names.

The result: For hours, anyone searching for posts from those cities and using the Chinese names for the locations would see pages and pages of useless tweets instead of information about the daring protests as they escalated to include calls for Communist Party leaders to resign.

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