
How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters - samfriedman
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/18/world/asia/hk-twitter.html
======
dirtyid
What is stopping Twitter from releasing server logs for others to
independently authenticate attribution? Facebook, Google have not declared.
The ASPI analysis proceeds on assumption that Twitters attribution is correct.
The startup Digital Intelligence concludes confidently "China has made its
debut as a confirmed information operations actor" because the bots
coordinated behavior "emulat[es] divisive disinformation tactics seen in other
disinformation campaigns from Russia and Iran".

That said, the take away from both analysis is that 30 (DI) - 112 (ASPI) of
the ~900 accounts have high likelihood of being an disinformation network...
that operated for over 2 years, using many re-purposed spam/dating/escort/porn
accounts that was never sanitized to preserve cover. Evaluate the scale and
operational rigor of this network and it's hard to conclude this is state-
level tradecraft than some independent agent/contractor with limited resources
and basic scripting knowledge.

Leave it to NYT to sneak in balance at the end with inflammatory headline.

>Elise Thomas, one of the authors of the Australian report, said that the low
level of professionalism suggested that the campaign was not the work of the
People’s Liberation Army or the Ministry of State Security, which have
previously been linked to Chinese cyberespionage and information campaigns.

>“I would be surprised if the P.L.A. was responsible because I would expect
they would be more competent than this,” Ms. Thomas said.

Yeah. Look, China is bad at foreign influence campaigns, but this is
insultingly bad. I'm completely willing to believe China has expanded
propaganda efforts abroad, but this doesn't feel like it.

E: unsurprisingly people are already using the article to accusing others of
being bots. Because humans writing and replying unique responses are
equivalent to automated bots that copy and base tweets on a schedule.

~~~
yorwba
> some independent agent/contractor with limited resources and basic scripting
> knowledge.

Outsourcing seems likely. Last month an invitation for bids was posted for a
contract to promote Chinese state media on Twitter for 1.2 million yuan,
payable if the follower count increased by at least 580,000 at the end of the
contract period. [1]

Some people have framed it as "China openly buys followers", but it seems
clear that whoever came up with the contract intended for those followers to
be real people, since a propaganda account is pretty useless if it's only read
by bots. Of course the successful bidder would be likely to try and add some
fake accounts if they couldn't hit the target otherwise. Someone seems to have
realized that and pulled the announcement, which is why I had to use an
archive.org link.

This spam campaign might have been similar; with a contract to spread
propaganda messages that lacked the necessary safeguards to ensure subtlety.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190822113315/http://www.ccgp.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190822113315/http://www.ccgp.gov.cn/cggg/dfgg/zbgg/201908/t20190816_12699714.htm)

~~~
dirtyid
The question is, is this the kind of activity China would outsource to this
quality? This recklessly on a sensitive topic like HK so close to 80th
anniversary. Was it that time-sensitive / desperate to allow something this
amateurish to roll out. They're paying millions buying advertisement in
foreign newspapers, I'd expect an social median influence operation would get
more funding than 100 poorly cultivated bot accounts.

Services for hitting western social media KPIs are dime a dozen, but a private
industry for foreign influence campaigns not so much. Maybe those Estonian
fake news kids. Would be interesting to see what that tender would look like
though, at least they're paying more than 50c.

------
machbio
Am starting to feel this trolling is an industry (like troll farm) of its own
- there are people or bots dedicated to trolling and reporting people who
raise voice against the discrimination.. I recently had to report an unfair
service by virgin atlantic staff after an emergency landing - I tweeted the
pictures and video of the incident.. I was immediately trolled by twitter
accounts about how i should be happy that I am alive - I was complaining about
how the staff handled the issues after the emergency landing .. wish the
social media companies could raise voice against companies or countries that
use their platform to discredit real concern - guess people do not matter
anymore

~~~
AFascistWorld
You may not believe it, the vast majority of Chinese actually love the CCP and
the system, they only just hate that a few corrupt low-level officials who are
the bad apples fucking up leaders' glorious visions.

These "bots" are mostly spontaneous people, they are not even government-
sponsored Wumao, they genuinely love China and defend it, their reason being
it may have some flaws but any other country has too and is worse than China,
and them being either students or comfortable middle-class help.

~~~
wisty
I wouldn't say most Chinese love the system. They don't despise it though.

I think a lot see the HK thing as an attack on their country. There's a fair
bit of history (the insult of losing territory to foreign powers) and also
current tensions ('locusts' is a HK slur against mainland Chinese). A lot of
HK people kinda dislike mainlanders coming to HK, but the city kinda relies on
mainland money.

So there's already a bit of contention, then a large number of HK people are
protesting against mainland China having any influence. It's then easy to
conflate attacks on mainland China (the government) with attacks on mainland
China (the people).

~~~
gleenn
I feel like all the people who are involuntary organ-donors might disagree if
they weren't dead. China has a way of disappearing people who don't like it. I
wonder how many people would come out more vocally if you weren't disappeared
for disagreeing or even being outspoken.

[https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-
stories/the...](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/the-
reality-of-human-organ-harvesting-in-china/news-
story/14d3aa5751c39d6639a1cc5b39f223b7)

~~~
jjcc
Give you some hint: According to Godel theorem, a system in higher order is
necessary to judge the truth in current system. So self claim the story is
true implied the story teller (i.e. the author of the news) is not quite
intellegent and maybe very naive to mix fact and belief.

I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce others
accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is truth. It's quite
insulting.

~~~
legacynl
> I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce
> others accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is truth.
> It's quite insulting.

Are you Chinese? You being offended by his post makes me feel like you are. He
wasn't forcing his oppinion on you.

Also godel's theorem doesn't have anything to do with this, as godel's theorem
is about mathematical systems.

~~~
jjcc
Legally I'm not Chinese but it's not relevant in this context. You have a
wrong assumption about the cause. Another wrong assumption is I'm offended
which I’m not. Here's the subtle difference: A person's behaviour is insulting
meanings he/she could offend some (not all) people who follow some rules,
which might be: reasoning process should base on relative facts/axioms within
the same axiomatic system.

Let me explain a little more about where the insulting comes from. During
daily conversation people usually omit many relevant consensus details:
context and premises. Otherwise communication would be extremely redundant.

One thing is important is: anything put into premise that other conclusions
can drawn from, should be relative facts which all the parties agree. By
providing personal belief as premise to draw other conclusion without
explicitly stating that’s just personal belief means the “evidence” provider
cannot tell the difference , unintentionally and implicitly force others
reasoning within “evidence” provider’s own axioms system, without knowing
there’s totally different axioms system with other premises exist.

In short: There's no problem at all to express personal opinions. However put
personal opinion into a premise to draw other conclusions during reasoning
without explicit emphasise is not good.

About Godel theorem, strictly it’s only about Math. You are right on that. I’m
half joking but it’ an analogy. In sports field there’s a referee because if
one team can act as authoritative way to claim they own truth implicitly gives
the other team the same authority which will lead to chaos. There’s a parallel
relation here.

EDIT: typo and grammar fix

------
phil248
It's a good time to remember that the vast majority of people never use
Twitter. The media has had a fixation with the platform for as long as I can
remember, which has helped it gain an unearned reputation as being relevant.

It's not relevant. It's the trash heap of the internet. I can't understand why
anyone would continue to spend time on it when it's become universally known
that bots and trolls run the show.

~~~
mieseratte
> It's not relevant. It's the trash heap of the internet.

It's got heads of state, leaders of enterprise, and myriad celebrity on the
platform. As much as I'd like to see Twitter, Facebook, et. al. nuked from
orbit, they're very much relevant.

~~~
dmix
Agreed, it may still be a trash heap, but it's still very relevant culturally.
It's also a lazy source for headlines and (occasionally) breaking news so it
gets far more relevance media-wise than it warrants in terms of quality.

------
josefresco
A lot more data here, which was referenced in the article:
[https://medium.com/digintel/welcome-to-the-party-a-data-
anal...](https://medium.com/digintel/welcome-to-the-party-a-data-analysis-of-
chinese-information-operations-6d48ee186939)

------
bernierocks
China has been using armies of bots for many years to sway public opinion.
Much scarier than Russia, because they have 10X the resources.

~~~
55436throw
Well they’ve been doing a pretty bad job then, considering how often they are
bashed on HN, Reddit, Imgur, etc.

~~~
llIIlIlIllIIlIl
It's incredibly funny to me how concerned western netizens seem to be about
Chinese astroturfing... as if it's an actual problem they need to worry about.

99.9999% of comments you'll find online are highly critical of China. The most
upvoted submissions on Reddit and HN are often those critical of China. Most
Americans (60% last time I checked) already have a negative view of China and
their knee-jerk reaction is to support anything or anyone who speaks out
against the CCP.

Does anyone really think 17 bots on Twitter tweeting messages in Chinese is
going to change this?

~~~
bernierocks
"Does anyone really think 17 bots on Twitter tweeting messages in Chinese is
going to change this?"

Try 17 thousand or 17 million bots, Tweeting in English.

This is also only a small fraction of what they are actually doing. If you
take a look at many new movies coming out in the US, many are financed by a
Chinese company.

They have also started buying major stakes in media companies, like Reddit.

The strange thing about the Hong Kong protests is that I can't seem to find
any balanced coverage of it and I almost saw no coverage of it here on major
US television networks.

~~~
cylinder714
_Try 17 thousand or 17 million bots, Tweeting in English_

And now they've got Reddit covered with /r/Sino but I'm unsure if that's new
or not.

------
freeflight
I really hate how inherently biased and subjective most reporting about
"social bots" seems to be.

For these last years headlines about all kinds of "bot armies" are constantly
making the rounds, getting blamed for pretty much everything from Trump's
election to Brexit.

Often based on some research that defines the parameters for a user being a
"social bot", that they have extremely high false-positive rates, but still
end up only identifying hundreds, maybe thousands of accounts, on platforms
that have total user numbers in the hundreds of millions or even over a
billion.

That is already enough to cause widespread paranoia about
Chinese/Russian/Iranian trolls supposedly being everywhere.

So anybody on Twitter, Facebook or Reddit who's opinions and views don't align
with a certain Overton window, are quickly labeled as being "foreign
influencers", regardless of any arguments or facts whatsoever, in a purely
ideological reaction of "What, you do not agree that <insert country> is
evil?! How dare you!".

Meanwhile, barely anybody talks about the reality that these kinds of games
are played by pretty much everybody [0] [1], but I guess it would be weird for
a US American platform to ban users for spreading pro-US propaganda. Tho, it's
still scary how completely oblivious most people seem to be about that, while
seeing the Chinese/Russian/Iranian version everywhere.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-
op...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-
social-networks)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/)

~~~
plausibilities
We've all already been successfully trolled.

The well has already been poisoned.

Paranoia has now been compounded.

Clarity regarding contemporary domestic political landscape has now been
further muddled.

Effective astroturfing was always a secondary objective.

------
diedyesterday
In a few years the Chinese economy will experience much slower growth rate
(similar to the West) and people will get out of the this 30-year hypnotic
state of fast-moving and dehumanizing economic development and quest for money
(which the CCP has used to consolidate its grip) and with the growing
corruption at increasingly higher levels of the government, the people will
eventually demand what is theirs: The right to rule and appoint their rulers
and then the CCP will be in trouble, and there won't be a blazingly fast
economic growth to hide behind.

------
devbyte
twitter is just a cesspit now. I have watched this happen to my own country
(the UK) with trolls and bots constantly pumping out anything which gets an
emotional reaction of outrage.

------
ospider
I stopped trusting any New York Times article since the report of Lanxiang[1],
which became a popular meme on Chinese social networks.

1\.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/technology/22cyber.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/technology/22cyber.html)

------
droidist2
I see this in YouTube comments a lot on Hong Kong-related videos. Also they
flag videos. A Cantonese language YouTuber I follow posted one video with her
opinions and got flagged and hit with a strike on her account.

------
zachguo
China should scrap the GFW and unleash them all, I guess the English-speaking
world would have to build a GFW to fend off all Chinese netizens then.

~~~
dmix
They don't even need to. It's not like they are having any problems doing what
they want currently and their power is so far from being threatened that it's
not even worthing monitoring.

------
no_opinions
They go by the name 50 Cent party:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

This is purely something that's pushing a political agenda. In China, there's
a single party, so disagreement is perceived as sabotage. While in other
countries, its accepted as part of the system.

In US we have a house/senate minority leader:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_leader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_leader)

In Westminster-based systems (Australia, Canada, UK), they call them
opposition:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_opposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_opposition)

So if China lacks this representation, what is there to counterbalance?
Wouldn't it lead to viewpoint discrimination?

There are things that need a more direct form a democracy to fix. Rent
control, tighter restrictions on who does business/runs for election there.
For instance, should agents of Beijing be fit to represent the people of HK
and craft laws?

If you'd like to see what happens when foreign governments sabotage
legislature, Poland's first legislative councils were rampant with it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_in_the_Early...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_in_the_Early_Modern_era_\(1569%E2%80%931795\))

What other outlet is there but giving control to HK citizens have total and
complete sovereignty to handle their own localized issues?

------
chillacy
Anyone else a bit freaked out at how effective social influence is? What does
that say about how we form opinions?

~~~
cwkoss
I think 95%+ of opinions are directly regurgitated from others, but we humans
mistake our own novelty with the idea for the idea actually being original.

Thinking about my teenage years, I'd often see a documentary and then "come
up" with concepts it covered a week or two later.

Similarly, I think one of the biggest issues with "bot influencers" is that
the average human is not good at thinking for themselves and regurgitates
whatever they agree with/protects the ego. The online activity of many
technology-naive middle aged users gradually becomes indistinguishable from
the bots they follow.

~~~
Kifot
What do you think is the best approach to make sure one's opinion is
independent without spending a massive amount of time on getting an expertise
in the subject?

~~~
krapp
You can't. Independent opinion doesn't exist - you would have to validate
every datum you're presented with starting from first principles, which is
impossible.

Accept that most of your opinions will be informed by the opinions of others,
likely directly, and your method for judging truth will instinctively be
biased more towards emotion, social status and ego-preservation than than
logic and fact, because humans are social animals and that's just how we're
wired.

------
slacka
For anyone paywalled: [http://archive.is/Blzuk](http://archive.is/Blzuk)

------
artsyca
We gotta stop blaming `China` -- The China brand has been tarnished unfairly
in my view as we use it to be synonymous with the so-called `Communist Party
of China`

~~~
artsyca
As usual, with the downvotes, allow us to clarify:

At present there are still people just like us being saddled with some
mandarin fever dream of the social credit system while we're treating the
whole continent of China like a troll brigade pumping fake news on twitter and
suppressing Hong Kong video clips on TikTok

We've gotta understand that fighting totalitarianism with prejudice and
stereotypes plays right into the hands of the puppet masters and doubly
victimizes the innocent people caught in the crossfire, who could very well be
us in another life

------
hujun
most time, and most people always believe what they want to believe

------
president
There needs to be some sort of internet sanction where the offending country's
internet access to the world is cut off until they start acting like good
global citizens.

~~~
praptak
We cannot even eradicate botnets operated by individual criminals.

~~~
dvtrn
We can't (won't) even stop robocalling (US)

