Battleground States: Twitter and Facebook Ban Chinese-Linked Accounts
Battleground States: Twitter and Facebook Ban Chinese-Linked Accounts
The Lowy Institute's Interpreter
This piece outlines the practical aspects of an October 2019 decision by Facebook and Twitter to address coordinated activity on each of their platforms which appeared to be pushing a pro-Beijing message in the face of ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Together, they removed almost 1000 accounts between them. Twitter also shut down a latent network of approximately 2000 accounts, and also banned state-owned press entities, such as Xinhua, from buying its advertising. The piece argues that in general the companies' approaches here are not necessarily by a concern for foreign interference, Instead, they are driven by the problem coordinated activity poses for their business model. Twitter and Facebook see coordinated activity and fake accounts as damaging to their brand in a traditional, consumer-oriented sense and ban it in their Terms of Service for that reason, not because they seek to protect audiences from foreign interference. Regardless, these latest measures see social media companies enter an increasingly tense geopolitical battlefield marked by increased Chinese activity. At the same time, many social media companies are desperately seeking access to the Chinese market, with policy approaches consequently muddied by competing commercial concerns.
Read it here.