Protesters attend a rally at Victoria Park in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 18, 2019. Heavy rain fell on tens of thousands of umbrella-toting protesters Sunday as they marched from a packed park and filled a major road in Hong Kong, where mass pro-democracy demonstrations have become a regular weekend activity over the summer. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Twitter said it has suspended more than 200,000 accounts that it believes were part of a Chinese government influence campaign targeting the protest movement in Hong Kong.

The company also said Monday it will ban ads from state-backed media companies, expanding a prohibition it first applied in 2017 to two Russian entities.

Both measures are part of what a senior company official portrayed in an interview as a broader effort to curb malicious political activity on a popular platform that has been criticized for enabling election interference around the world and for accepting money for ads that amount to propaganda by state-run media organizations.

The accounts were suspended for violating the social networking platform’s terms of service and “because we think this is not how people can come to Twitter to get informed,” the official said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said the Chinese activity was reported to the FBI, which investigated Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election through social media.

After being notified by Twitter and conducting its own investigation, Facebook said Monday that it has also removed seven pages, three groups and five accounts, including some portraying protesters as cockroaches and terrorists.

The Chinese government said Tuesday it wasn’t aware of the allegations.

Facebook, which is more widely used in Hong Kong, does not release data on such state-backed influence operations. Neither does it ban ads from state-owned media companies.

“We continue to look at our policies as they relate to state-owned media,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to the AP. “We’re also taking a closer look at ads that have been raised to us to determine if they violate our policies.”

Twitter traced the Hong Kong campaign to two fake Chinese and English Twitter accounts that pretended to be news organizations based in Hong Kong, where pro-democracy demonstrators have taken to the streets since early June calling for full democracy and an inquiry into what they say is police violence against protesters.

The Chinese language account, @HKpoliticalnew, and the English account, @ctcc507, pushed tweets depicting protesters as violent criminals in a campaign aimed at influencing public opinion around the world. One of those accounts was tied to a suspended Facebook account that went by the same moniker: HKpoliticalnew.

An additional 936 core accounts Twitter believes originated from within China attempted to sow political discord in Hong Kong by undermining the protest movement’s legitimacy and political positions.

About 200,000 more automated Twitter accounts amplified the messages, engaging with the core accounts in the network. Few tweeted more than once, the official said, mostly because Twitter quickly caught many of them.

The Twitter official said the investigation remains ongoing and there could be further disclosures.

Though Twitter, Facebook and most other foreign social media platforms are banned in China, they’re available in semiautonomous Hong Kong.

At a daily briefing Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he was “not aware” of the allegations of fake accounts, but added that Chinese people had the right to “express their opinions about” the situation in Hong Kong.

The free speech organization PEN America welcomed the tech companies’ actions and urged them to do more.

“China’s government has denied its citizens access to global outlets for communication. That they now turn around and stealthily unleash a campaign of disinformation on the very same platforms represents a new height of hypocrisy,” chief executive Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.

The Twitter campaign reflects that the Chinese government has studied the role of social media in mass movements and fears the Hong Kong protests could spark wider unrest, said James Lewis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“This is standard Chinese practice domestically, and we know that after 2016 they studied what the Russians did in the U.S. carefully,” Lewis said. “So it sounds like this is the first time they’re deploying their new toy.”

Twitter has sought to more aggressively monitor its network for malicious political activity since the 2016 presidential election and to be more transparent about its investigations, publicly releasing data about state-backed influence operations since October so others can evaluate it, the official said.

“We’re not only telling the public this happened, we’re also putting the data out there so people can study it for themselves,” the official said.

As for state-backed media organizations, they are still allowed to use Twitter, but are no longer allowed to pay for ads, which show up regardless of whether you have elected to follow the group’s tweet.

Twitter declined to provide a list of what it considers state-backed media organizations, but a representative said it may consider doing so in the future. In 2017, Twitter specifically announced it would ban Russia-based RT and Sputnik from advertising on its platform.

Associated Press writer Chris Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to attribute PEN America statement to the chief executive, not the spokesman. </s> Facebook and Twitter are accusing China of running a disinformation campaign against the protesters in Hong Kong, according to their blog posts on Monday, and are no longer accepting advertising dollars from the state-controlled news media entities.

"We are disclosing a significant state-backed information operation focused on the situation in Hong Kong, specifically the protest movement and their calls for political change," Twitter wrote in its blog.

The social media giant outlined 936 accounts which were from inside the People's Republic of China and disclosed "a larger, spammy network of approximately 200,000 accounts" were also suspended due to their connection to this possible disinformation campaign.

"Overall, 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 wrote.

Facebook joined the fight on Monday as well, saying they "removed seven pages, three groups and five Facebook accounts involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior as part of a small network that originated in China and focused on Hong Kong."

Facebook claims the people behind the social media campaign used fake accounts to manage pages that appeared to be news organizations.

"Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the Chinese government," Facebook wrote in its blog.

"Specifically, we identified large clusters of accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related to the Hong Kong protests," Twitter wrote.

Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China, but some people access their accounts by using a virtual private network (VPN).

"We will continue to be vigilant, learning from this network and proactively enforcing our policies to serve the public conversation," Twitter wrote.

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Both Twitter and Facebook say they are sharing the issue in an effort to be more transparent. </s> Twitter and Facebook have landed in hot water for allowing Chinese state-run media outlets to run ads on their platforms that criticize pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

In response, Twitter said Monday that it would no longer accept advertising from state-controlled news media outlets. The company also said that it suspended 936 accounts from China that attempted to sow political discord in Hong Kong including efforts to undermine the protests in Hong Kong.

Facebook said that it pulled down 5 Facebook accounts, 7 Pages and 3 Groups with ties to people linked to the Chinese government after it got a tip from Twitter. These users posted about political topics including the Hong Kong protests, but the social network said they were suspending the accounts, pages and groups for misleading others about their identity and purpose.

The moves by the social networks come amid criticism that the companies aren't doing enough to combat disinformation and propaganda on their platforms. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of peaceful activists took to the streets of Hong Kong for the 11th week of demonstrations, CNN reported. Protesters were initially rallying against a now-suspended bill by the Hong Kong government that would have allowed people arrested Hong Kong to be transferred and tried in mainland China. Since then, the protests have expanded to include calls for more democracy and government accountability, according to CNN. Protesters have clashed with police in Hong Kong, who have reportedly fired tear gas and beat activists with batons, according to various media reports.

Now some of the world's largest social networks are under fire for the role they're playing in these political protests. Facebook and Twitter are both blocked in China, but businesses and organizations can still run ads on these platforms.

Maciej Ceglowski, developer of the social-media bookmarking site Pinboard, called on Twitter over the weekend to stop selling ads to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. One promoted tweet from the news outlet stated that "the escalating violence in Hong Kong has taken a heavy toll on the social order" and that "all walks of life in Hong Kong called for a brake to be put on the blatant violence and for order to be restored."

The Xinhua News Agency didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter pointed to their blog posts about changes to their ads policy and the Chinese accounts the company removed for violating its rules against spam, fake accounts and other forms of "platform manipulation."

Chinese state-run media outlets were also using Facebook to display ads critical of Hong Kong protesters. One ad about the Hong Kong protests by Xinhua states that "calls are mounting for immediate actions to restore order," according to Facebook's ad library. Another ad says that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has voiced her support for the protesters, "should fly to Hong Kong to see what the true facts are." </s> The showdown between Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese government rose to a new level Tuesday as Beijing defended its right to spread its views online — even if the tactics violate company guidelines designed to curb the spread of disinformation.

The resistance from China, voiced by Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang at a news briefing in Beijing, came a day after Twitter and Facebook named the Chinese government as responsible for what they called “coordinated, inauthentic behavior” in shaping online portrayals of the political protests roiling Hong Kong. It was the first time major U.S. companies had named China as responsible for a disinformation campaign, though researchers have said for years that the government there has major, sophisticated social media operations aimed at influencing public debate.

Some of the thousands of accounts closed by the companies had profiles claiming to be from other countries, including from numerous cities in the United States, and Twitter said that technological tools called “VPNs” were used to fake the locations of users. Geng said the accounts were not the work of government disinformation teams but Chinese students and others living overseas who “of course have the right to express their point of view,” according to a Reuters report.

“What is happening in Hong Kong, and what the truth is, people will naturally have their own judgment,” Geng said. He added, “Why is it that China’s official media’s presentation is surely negative or wrong?”

Neither company responded immediately to requests for comment about Geng’s statements.

Geng’s comments underscored the challenge social media companies face in trying to combat the kind of disinformation tactics used by Russians in the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and that increasingly are rampant in many countries around the world. As U.S.-based companies attempt to police online discourse globally, there is no international consensus over what qualifies as permissible speech — or permissible tactics in spreading that speech, whether it comes from government operatives or anybody else.

This emerging global debate echoes one in the United States as President Trump and many conservatives blast the social media companies for being too aggressive in blocking accounts that they regard as violating their rules for authentic discourse online, portraying such efforts as censorship of political speech. Trump held a White House summit last month highlighting these complaints.

[Twitter and Facebook take first actions against China for using fake accounts to sow discord in Hong Kong]

Disinformation researchers on Monday praised Twitter and Facebook for naming the Chinese government as responsible for online campaigns that depicted the Hong Kong protests as the work of violent hooligans provoked by Western forces such as the CIA. Twitter shut down nearly 1,000 active accounts that it said was part of the operation and roughly 200,000 it said were created to help the effort. Facebook closed five accounts, seven pages and three groups on its platform it depicted as fake.

Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said, “China has undertaken information operations that, much like their foreign policy, have been much more subtle and discreet... and this is neither subtle nor discreet."

The scale and sophistication of the effort was not particularly notable, but the decision by the companies to finger a powerful government as responsible — something companies once shied away from — was seen as an indicator of increasing assertiveness by Silicon Valley. Companies have faced serious political and public pressure in recent years to combat the fake and misleading accounts that have flooded their platforms and warped online debate worldwide.

[It’s not just the Russians anymore as Iranians and others turn up disinformation efforts ahead of 2020 vote]

"It would be a tough call to make for anybody to call out China in an influence operation," said Ben Nimmo, chief of investigations for Graphika, a network analysis firm based in New York that studies online disinformation.

The moves by Facebook and Twitter could set up a major geopolitical clash over how much influence nations can exert on the ways information spreads across the Web.

China has enjoyed virtually unassailable control on social media within its borders, employing systems of strict censorship and surveillance against online topics conflicting with the government's self-asserted ambitions, image and power.

But the social-media giants’ response suggests that the country has attempted similar information-manipulation tactics around the world, likely to boost its international support and undermine protests in Hong Kong.

Daniel Sinclair, an independent social-media researcher in New York who tracks Chinese influence, says the country's attempts to steer online debate in the West seem to have grown recently, possibly amid anxieties over how it is being perceived amid a U.S. trade war and the Hong Kong unrest.

“This Chinese nationalism that is spreading across American and Western social media, much of it isn’t true disinformation as we understand it, but a lot of it is backed by actual state propaganda and fake news,” Sinclair said. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen their media machine working at this scale ... With social media, China has new kinds of influence, and new fingers in the Western media, that they haven’t had before.”

Twitter and Facebook are not widely available in China overall but are in Hong Kong. Silicon Valley for years has sought to expand its limited footprint in the world’s most populous nation, with mixed success, as Chinese companies have become major domestic and global players in social media and other areas of advanced technology.

For some researchers, the moves have also cast a harsh spotlight on the lone social-media giant that has yet to offer comment: Google, whose YouTube has been similarly criticized for its use in the spread of political misinformation.

"Two of the three relevant companies have made public statements," said Alex Stamos, a former security chief at Facebook who now works as an adjunct professor at Stanford University, in tweets late Monday.

For social-media companies to attribute attacks to governments, “it’s a lot harder when the actor is financially critical,” he added. Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. </s> Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam listens to reporters questions at a press conference in Hong Kong Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019. Lam said she’s setting up a “communication platform” to resolve differences in the Chinese city, which has been wracked by months of chaotic anti-government protests. She also said a fact-finding study will look at the causes of the protests and the police response to them. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

HONG KONG (AP) — Facing pressure to end months of antigovernment protests, Hong Kong’s leader pledged Tuesday to open up dialogue with city residents in an effort to narrow differences.

However, Chief Executive Carrie Lam offered no concessions to the protest movement and a key organizer of the mass rallies dismissed her plan to immediately set up a “communication platform,” underlining the challenge in resolving the semiautonomous Chinese city’s political crisis.

The movement held a massive but peaceful rally on Sunday after earlier protests had been marked by violence. The government has conditioned dialogue on the leaderless protest movement remaining peaceful.

Lam didn’t say that the communication platform will be used to specifically contact protesters. It will be used for “open and direct” dialogue with people from all walks of life, including people who have attended peaceful rallies, she told reporters, while giving few specifics on how it would work.

“Our goal is to work hard to resolve differences and conflicts, to understand each other through communication and to walk out of this social deadlock together,” Lam said.

Her comments fell short of the protesters’ five demands, which include genuine democracy and an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality.

The protesters complain that police have contributed to the violence by responding to their aggressive tactics with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Members of the Civil Human Rights Front rejected her plan, calling it a trap that’s aimed at wasting time.

The group’s vice-convenor, Wong Yik-mo, said Lam is “not responding at all” to the protest movement’s demands.

“We do not trust Carrie Lam, we do not trust her lies,” he said, pointing out that the movement’s decentralized structure would make it hard to conduct dialogue anyway.

“She is fully aware there is no leader, this is a leaderless movement. What does she suggest?” he said.

Jimmy Sham, another member, suggested that “if Lam wants dialogue, she should come to a protest.”

The Civil Human Rights Front has organized several mass anti-government rallies that have attracted huge crowds in recent months and it plans another at the end of the month. But many other groups have organized their own events.

Lam dismissed the protesters’ demand for an independent inquiry, saying the city’s police complaints council is capable of looking into police misconduct. The council is carrying out a fact-finding study of the protests and related incidents as it looks into 174 complaints about police behavior, she said.

Protesters say that the complaints council has limited power to scrutinize the police.

Mo and Sham said the council has no credibility and its main function is merely to look into complaints.

“It has no mandate to investigate and no power to summon policeman (to give evidence), especially when top brass are involved,” Mo said.

Separately, Twitter said late Monday that it has suspended nearly 1,000 accounts it believes were behind a Chinese government influence campaign targeting the protest movement.

The social media company blocked about 200,000 more automated accounts that amplified the messages, engaging with the core accounts in the network

The accounts were attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong by undermining the protest movement’s legitimacy and political positions.

Facebook took similar action, but on a smaller scale. The social network removed seven pages, three groups and five accounts, including some portraying protesters as cockroaches and terrorists, after being tipped off by Twitter and conducting its own investigation.

This story has been corrected to say the protest movement is not calling for Lam’s resignation.

Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah in Washington contributed to this report. </s> Beijing — China said on Tuesday that it has the 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.

Twitter said on Monday that it suspended 936 accounts and the operations appeared to be a co-ordinated, state-backed effort originating in China.

Facebook said it had removed accounts and pages from a small network after a tip from Twitter, saying its investigation found links to individuals associated with the Chinese government.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang declined direct comment on the Twitter and Facebook actions, but defended the right of Chinese people and media to make their voices heard over the Hong Kong protests.

Overseas Chinese and students “of course have the right to express their point of view”, he told a daily news briefing. “What is happening in Hong Kong, and what the truth is, people will naturally have their own judgment. Why is it that China’s official media’s presentation is surely negative or wrong?”

Twitter and Facebook have come under fire from users over showing ads from state-controlled media that criticise the Hong Kong protesters. Twitter said on Monday that it would no longer accept advertising from state-controlled news media, and told Reuters the change was not related to the suspended accounts.

Twitter and Facebook are blocked by the Chinese government from being used on the mainland, but are freely accessible in Hong Kong, where protests since June have plunged the Chinese-ruled territory into its most serious crisis in decades.

Chinese media use foreign social media to communicate with people around the world to introduce them to Chinese policies and “tell China’s story”, Geng said. “I don’t know why certain companies or peoples’ reaction is so strong.”

The Hong Kong protests present one of the biggest challenges for China’s President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012. They began in opposition to a now-suspended bill that would allow suspects to be sent to the mainland for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts, but have since swelled into wider calls for democracy.

Social media companies globally are under pressure to stem illicit political influence campaigns online, especially ahead of the US presidential election in November 2020. A 22-month US investigation concluded Russia interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” in the 2016 US election to help Donald Trump win the presidency. </s> Twitter Inc deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages that discouraged people from voting in U.S. election.

The accounts wrongly appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading tweets to the social media company.

“We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesman said in an email. The removals took place in late September and early October.

Twitter removed more than 10,000 accounts, according to three sources familiar with the Democrats’ effort. The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, a party group that supports Democrats running for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The DCCC launched the effort this year in response to the party’s inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms that spread negative and false information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation told Reuters.

While the prevalence of misinformation campaigns have so far been modest in the run-up to the Congressional elections on Nov. 6, Democrats are hoping the flagging operation will help them react quickly if there is a flurry of such messages in the coming days.

The Tweets included ones that discouraged Democratic men from voting, saying that would drown out the voice of women, according to two of the sources familiar with the flagging operation.

The DCCC developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social media, according to the three party sources.

The system was built in part from publicly available tools known as “Hoaxley” and “Botometer” developed by University of Indiana computer researchers. They allow a user to identify automated accounts, also known as bots, and analyze how they spread information on specific topics.

“We made Hoaxley and Botometer free for anyone to use because people deserve to know what’s a bot and what’s not,” said Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science at the University of Indiana.

The Democratic National Committee works with a group of contractors and partners to rapidly identify misinformation campaigns.

They include RoBhat Labs, a firm whose website says it has developed technology capable of detecting bots and identifying political-bias in messages.

The collaboration with RoBhat has already led to the discovery of malicious accounts and posts, which were referred to social media companies and other campaign officials, DNC Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian said in email. </s> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twitter Inc deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages that discouraged people from voting in Tuesday’s U.S. election and wrongly appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading tweets to the social media company.

A voting official hands back an early voter his ID in Valdosta, Georgia, U.S., October 24, 2018. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant

“We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesman said in an email. The removals took place in late September and early October.

Twitter removed more than 10,000 accounts, according to three sources familiar with the Democrats’ effort. The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, a party group that supports Democrats running for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The DCCC launched the effort this year in response to the party’s inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms that spread negative and false information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation told Reuters.

While the prevalence of misinformation campaigns have so far been modest in the run-up to the Congressional elections on Nov. 6, Democrats are hoping the flagging operation will help them react quickly if there is a flurry of such messages in the coming days.

The Tweets included ones that discouraged Democratic men from voting, saying that would drown out the voice of women, according to two of the sources familiar with the flagging operation.

The DCCC developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social media, according to the three party sources.

The system was built in part from publicly available tools known as “Hoaxley” and “Botometer” developed by University of Indiana computer researchers. They allow a user to identify automated accounts, also known as bots, and analyse how they spread information on specific topics.

“We made Hoaxley and Botometer free for anyone to use because people deserve to know what’s a bot and what’s not,” said Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science at the University of Indiana.

The Democratic National Committee works with a group of contractors and partners to rapidly identify misinformation campaigns.

They include RoBhat Labs, a firm whose website says it has developed technology capable of detecting bots and identifying political-bias in messages.

The collaboration with RoBhat has already led to the discovery of malicious accounts and posts, which were referred to social media companies and other campaign officials, DNC Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian said in email.

Krikorian did not say whether the flagged posts were ultimately removed by Twitter.

“We provide the DNC with reports about what we’re seeing in terms of bot activity and where it’s being amplified,” said Ash Bhat, co-founder of RoBhat Labs.

“We can’t tell you who’s behind these different operations, Twitter hides that from us, but with the technology you known when and how it’s happening,” Bhat said. </s> Twitter has removed more than 10,000 accounts aiming to discourage people from voting in the US midterm elections on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

A Twitter representative confirmed the social media site deleted several automated accounts sharing misinformation, but couldn't confirm the 10,000 figure. The company removed the accounts in September and October, Reuters reports.

The accounts were reportedly made to look like they were from Democrats, but the party reported the tweets to Twitter. The accounts also appeared to be domestic. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

"For the election this year we have established open lines of communication and direct, easy escalation paths for state election officials, DHS, and campaign organizations from both major parties," a Twitter representative said. "We removed a series of accounts for engaging in attempts to share disinformation in an automated fashion - a violation of our policies. We stopped this quickly and at its source."

Twitter has been working to step up its fight against fake accounts. In July, it was reported that the social media company was suspending 1 million accounts a day in its fight against disinformation. In a June blog post, Twitter said it's "now removing 214 percent more accounts for violating our spam policies on a year-on-year basis." Twitter's efforts to combat bots and trolls comes as it deals with revelations that Russian-linked social media troll accounts may have influenced the 2016 US presidential election.
Twitter says it has suspended more than 200,000 automated accounts on the social media site that it believes were part of a Chinese government-run campaign to spread misinformation about the protests in Hong Kong.