One such instance has to be related to Twitter hiding all the protests that have arisen thanks to the massive response to China’s clampdown against soaring COVID-19 infections.
Those users on the app who really wished to get a grip on the news developing around the globe and how many street protests were occurring against the intense lockdown embarked on by the Chinese Government. These individuals were met with plenty of ads for escort services in China.
One China watcher mentioned how the search was on for various Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing. But what people got in return was discussions about spam and visuals depicting escorts and their services.
Somebody, likely the Chinese authorities, are flooding Twitter with "dating" videos containing the keyword "乌鲁木齐 / Ürümqi" in an effort to drown out posts about the deadly lockdown-facilitated fire that took place in Xinjiang today. https://t.co/9NZGLQAMvO pic.twitter.com/AzuPm5IWja
— GreatFire.org (@GreatFireChina) November 25, 2022
Chinese bots are flooding Twitter with *escort ads*, possibly to make it more difficult for Chinese users to access information about the mass protests. Some of these acts have been dormant for years, only to become active yesterday after protests broke out in China. for example: pic.twitter.com/QRYLQu09Pq
— Mengyu Dong (@dong_mengyu) November 27, 2022
Can @elonmusk explain why top search results for these Chinese cities are all escort ads? There have been active protests in these cities and people inside China are coming to Twitter to see what the government has censored. pic.twitter.com/tXQhL2Aoxy
— Wenhao (@ThisIsWenhao) November 27, 2022
Meanwhile, another Chinese analyst says he ran plenty of checks regarding tweets to see what would pop up if the term latest came. And that’s when 95% mentioned them to be spam. They tweeted a huge rate of spam and it’s been going on for a while now.
Then I looked at the number of tweets by each account over time.
— Air-Moving Device (@AirMovingDevice) November 28, 2022
Interestingly, more than 70% of these spam accounts only started tweeting like crazy recently.
The rest (~top 90 in this plot) seem to have been spamming consistently for a while. pic.twitter.com/OeB9n5Pnm3
But China and bots aren’t something too new. The blame is not only on Twitter or any of its shortcomings. Even though a lot of people felt mass layoffs under Musk’s leadership might be partly the reason for this endeavor.
Now, bots are arising who flood the platform with ads linked to escorts. And that just makes it so much harder to gain access to data that is quintessential for the time being and needs to be highlighted.
You’ll be amazed to find how some accounts that were dormant for years are now coming forward with spam posts left and right. In just 24 hours, you’ll see more than 2000 tweets take center stage.
The reason why it’s shocking is how the figures are way more than a few hundred. Every few seconds, new posts pop up and it’s concerning to see how efficiently such bots are working.
On the other hand, we’ve got Elon Musk coming under fire too at the same time. It was super clear to all of these Chinese users of Twitter that the app was dealing with spam posts.
But many felt that it was time for Musk to provide plenty of justification as to why all of these posts coming on Twitter were linked to escorts when all a user was searching for was a Chinese city.
People turn to Twitter so they can see posts about the Chinese government that was censored. But now, that’s not seeming to be a possibility. And it’s raising even more questions in people’s minds about what Musk wants and why he’s not addressing the real matter or finding a solution.
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