Twitter has found itself at the center of a heated political battle that goes to the heart of social media's responsibility for eradicating fake news.
promoted tweets—essentially targeted ads— to be placed by China's state media, attacking pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong and blaming those campaigners for the escalating violence and civil unrest.
Dressed up as news but in reality peddling Beijing's messaging, the state media outlet Xinhua's consistent theme has been the Hong Kong public's demand for the restoration of social order, the threat to Hong Kong's prosperity and economy and the implication that the protesters are themselves stoking the violence. Clearly a different set of messages from those we are seeing from genuine news outlets outside China.
All that said, the protesters have themselves been criticised for over-stepping the line, with the recent airport violence as an example. But the protesters haven't paid Twitter to push a different message, so that can be argued on its merits in the free press.China's Xinhua News Agency as"foreign agents," such is their unabashed propagandist mission across Western social media outlets.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
China Pays Twitter To Promote 'Fake News' Attacks On Hong Kong ProtestersTwitter has found itself at the center of a heated political battle that goes to the heart of social media's responsibility for eradicating fake news.
Read more »
China Pays Twitter To Promote Propaganda Attacks On Hong Kong ProtestersTwitter has found itself at the center of a heated political battle that goes to the heart of social media's responsibility for eradicating fake news.
Read more »
Facebook, Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation About Hong Kong ProtestersOne post compared Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators to ISIS.
Read more »
Twitter suspends China-backed accounts targeting Hong Kong protestsTwitter traced the Hong Kong campaign to fake Chinese and English Twitter accounts that pretended to be news organisations based in Hong Kong, where the demonstrators have taken to the streets since early June calling for full democracy.
Read more »
Twitter And Facebook Suspend China-Backed Propaganda Accounts Related To Hong Kong ProtestsTwitter said Monday that it has suspended 936 accounts it said originated from within state-backed operations in China designed to spread disinformation related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong…
Read more »
Facebook, Twitter remove accounts they say China used to undermine Hong Kong protestsTwitter announced Monday that it had suspended about 200,000 accounts that it said were part of a Chinese government-backed attempt to undermine 'the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement' in Hong Kong.
Read more »