
Disclosing networks of state-linked information operations we’ve removed - mpweiher
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/information-operations-june-2020.html
======
littlestymaar
I wonder if Twitter also does the same for Western governments ops or only for
“bad guys” like Russia, China and Turkey.

In France, during the “Yellow Vests” movement, there's has been a lot of
progovernment activity on Twitter from accounts which were obvious fake ones:
with a photo stock profile picture and a username made of “(often vintage)
French first name+ 5 or 6 random figures”.

I suspect this is frequent among western countries too but I don't have
evidence except for my country, if you have such stories for your country,
please share.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
There are quite a few people and organisations analysing social media
accounts. They have, on occasion, exposed botnets, or networks of fake
accounts that are manually run.

I know of a few here in Germany, and I have no doubt that they would gleefully
publish any US government networks they come across. And with the extreme
polarisation in the US, there should be plenty of people or publications on
either side to do the same.

The fact that, as far as I can tell, these tend not to be bots but manually-
run fake accounts might point to an explanation of the relative lack of such
activity: it might just be too expensive. And when it comes to networks
targeting other countries, every country that isn't natively English- or
Spanish-speaking is relatively save because you aren't going to find hundreds
of Americans speaking Russian willing to work for low wages and reliably keep
quiet about it.

That, of course, is in addition to the obvious reason that democratic
countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that. But I have a
hunch the ever-cynical crowd here would take offence at the idea that some
countries and governments sometimes don't behave in the worst possible way.

~~~
littlestymaar
> democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that

 _Democracy_ isn't a black and white things. Turkey is a democracy, no matter
how corrupt and authoritarian Erdogan is. And democracy-wise France is
arguably closer to Turkey than to the UK anyway.

~~~
atemerev
Really? With UK’s oppressive anti-privacy laws? Anyway, I live in Switzerland,
and we are the only real (direct) democracy out there. :)

~~~
efreak
Democracy doesn't preclude oppression or promote privacy. It also doesn't
require that all citizens have the ability to vote, that all living in the
country are citizens, or that citizens be free. Just like most forms of
government (so far as I know, the only pure forms of
communist/republican/democratic/etc government in current use are small scale
town/village level, so this doesn't really mean much). I also don't have much
knowledge on how most current governments work at any level of detail, so feel
free to tell me if I'm wrong.

------
halkcyon
I'm surprised they're not disclosing the US ones.

~~~
threeseed
I can't imagine US being all that significant.

Biden, Trump and various members of both camps command more than enough
attention through their own Twitter accounts.

Likewise pushing political agendas is largely superfluous given you can just
lobby politicians directly without needed public support.

~~~
guug
You're not considering foreign operations. If included, I bet the US would be
at the forefront.

~~~
killjoywashere
If the US is conducting psy-ops on social media against adversaries, wouldn't
they use media companies popular in that country? And, if that were Twitter,
wouldn't the language barrier still make it relatively harder for Twitter (a
company staffed predominantly by English-speaking employees) to investigate?

Additionally, does it merit discriminating between offensive and defensive
psy-ops? Might there, for example, be government-controled bots injecting
wholesomememes content into the feeds of depressed government employees? Does
Twitter have a different obligation in that context?

~~~
yorwba
> wouldn't the language barrier still make it relatively harder for Twitter (a
> company staffed predominantly by English-speaking employees) to investigate

That doesn't seem to have stopped them from banning accounts posting in
Chinese.

> government-controled bots injecting wholesomememes content into the feeds of
> depressed government employees

That would still be "coordinated inauthentic behavior".

------
yellow_lead
>23,750 accounts that comprise the core of the network, e.g. the highly
engaged core network. Approximately 150,000 accounts that were designed to
boost this content, e.g. the amplifiers.

That's a lot of 五毛

~~~
justicezyx
Since "五毛” is used everywhere for netizens to verbally attack anyone who
speaks positive towards CCP and Chinese government, I'd say this seems an
inappropriate use of language.

Instead, we probably should label this group as the “government sponsored
online moderator” "网评员”. This is more revealing of what actually is happening,
I.e. Chinese government hires people to influence and monitor online
communities.

On the other hand, there are many people who does think CCP and Chinese
government is good overall, and support them. Which I do not think it's fair
to label them as "五毛”. In case you find this unbelievable, I'll risk being
further misinterpreted, by citing the die hard trump supporters being labeled
"white supremacists", which I believe is harming the unity of this country.

~~~
ardit33
^ it seems that HN needs to do some garbage collection, and remove the state
linked accounts here as well

~~~
tossAfterUsing
you're leveling a claim i might agree with, but i don't think you're doing so
in an appropriate way (as in, if everybody behaved this way when similar
feelings arose, we'd have a real shit community)

if you have a problem with the statement, can you address where it's
inaccurate? or can you be more explicit with your own assertion in order that
the rest of us can address where your inaccuracies are.

~~~
justicezyx
GP here, I am moderately surprised that the parent post implied I am linked
with Chinese government. Usually people would be more subtle.

I was born and raised in mainland China, left to US for PhD at 22.

I gradually understand why westners show various degree of hatred towards the
Chinese government, CCP, and not so rarely the Chinese people. And also see
the equally ridiculous negative biased of Chinese people towards westners.

From a self-interest perspective, I try to state the less emotional charged
description on news relevant to China. Because I am seeing the risk of
becoming one of the scapegoat of the Sino-US conflict. For example, while I
was called linking to Chinese government, I am equally possible being called
"banana man" (yellow skin with white heart, you get the idea) by passionate
Chinese netizens.

I am actively risking my reputation on this forum by behaving like this. As
for a long time I am well aware of the genuine political and cultural biases.

But I believe this is best for my situation. I cannot just watching the hatred
grow between the common people without an action. That is also hurting the my
own and my family's future.

~~~
dang
This caught-in-the-middle position is common enough on HN that I wrote about
it when a similar issue came up last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200971).
That's a long post; the part that your comment reminded me of is this:

 _What you 're most likely getting is (for example, let's say) a Chinese-
Canadian Amazon or Microsoft employee, who's been reading HN for years and is
suddenly hurt and dismayed by all the aggressive anti-Chinese comments that
have been showing up on the site—or (let's say) a Chinese grad student who
stayed in the US, got a good job and played by the rules, and back home in
China is the one holding the other side of the argument, defending the US and
his American friends to his family who have been hearing nasty things about
them over there._

It is a difficult position to be in, because you get attacked from both sides,
and not just about something small, but in deep and painful places.

~~~
justicezyx
Thanks for the deep understanding shown in the posts. One correction: I am 36
years old with 2 kids born and raised in US now, was stating it was 22 years
when I came to US. :)

I really appreciate that you understand the situation people like us are in.
That is especially encouraging given the rapidly deteriorating situation in
recent years. The great irony, however, is that, coincidentally, both China
and US saw outliner leaders come into power. Like an old Chinese saying “the
good fortune never come with a companion, but the ill-fortune seldom come
alone” (福无双至祸不单行）.

Aside from activities here, I try to proactively engage with my network in
mainland China to debacle common biases towards US. My personal goal is to
improve understanding.

I have changed from a heavily indoctrinated young Chinese student to become
one who is able to appreciate the deep cultural convictions and altruistic
intentions of American people. I have seen the same vigorous pursue of better
life and unwavering self reliance from both American and Chinese people. I
firmly believe the value structures of American and Chinese people are
inherently compatible. The confrontation should be avoidable.

I would be hugely disappointed if US and China end up into Cold War like
confrontation. That will be an unprecedented waste of human value, and
squander of historical opportunity of advancing the international community to
a more productive stage.

~~~
ciarannolan
>Like an old Chinese saying “the good fortune never come with a companion, but
the ill-fortune seldom come alone” (福无双至祸不单行) .

This reminded me of the Anna Karenina principle [1] (but sort of the
opposite): "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in
its own way."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle)

------
vance5980
1,152 Kremlin bots banned sounds really underwhelming. Though on the other
hand, reliably detecting their throwaway accounts must be an impossible task.

------
coldcode
What still confuses me is how do people create so many bot/fake twitter
accounts when you are required to have a phone number? Throwaway phones?

~~~
raxxorrax
There are countless SMS services and it is a race of blacklisting the numbers
they use.

------
ghj
It requires a google account to download the archive. Can someone summarize or
cherry pick some examples? Just wondering what counts as manipulation and
whether I would be able to tell.

~~~
uname_amiy
Here's a report by ASPI [https://www.aspi.org.au/report/retweeting-through-
great-fire...](https://www.aspi.org.au/report/retweeting-through-great-
firewall)

------
Animats
Aw, you have to have a Google account to download the data.

~~~
antpls
Twitter migrated data to Google last year :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18976150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18976150)

That could explain it

------
YarickR2
Is this a joke ? I've downloaded Russian archive. Tweets there are not in any
way promoting any party , they are mostly retweets of regional and statewide
news agencies' posts. Some do have pro-Russia bias, but nothing raging and
nothing I could label as propaganda.

~~~
yorwba
According to Twitter, they were "suspended for violations of our platform
manipulation policy, specifically cross-posting and amplifying content in an
inauthentic, coordinated manner for political ends."

If you use a bot to retweet "regional and statewide news agencies' posts",
that would fall under the description above.

------
lowmemcpu
It helps to report accounts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram if you suspect
them of being a politically-motivated bot.

------
gtirloni
I hope they go after the Brazilian bots. The amount of disinformation is
staggering.

------
YarickR2
This is crap . IDK what's in the chinese and turkish archives, but banning
russian accounts for their activity in 2010 ( grep SamantaDarko , for example
) , and containing no political tweets at all ?

~~~
082349872349872
Were there any "я сама крымчанка дочь офицера" accounts on their list?

~~~
YarickR2
No, that's the point. Imagine accounts retweeting wide spectrum of moderate
GOP news sites, with an occassional joke or wit.

~~~
082349872349872
Being able to poke fun at oneself is one the components of my personal turing
test. (but that would imply /r/totallynotrobots/ are indeed human. ERROR!
ERROR! +++ATH + _" (Oäç/"ç_ä%()/ _ç%( /_ç tape_drive_spinning.gif

