The title sounds weird. But hang with me. It will make sense in the end. There have been protests in a variety of Chinese cities over China’s strict COVID lockdown protocols. And this seems to have made the government nervous enough to use a novel tactic to make sure that news about these protests don’t get out. Via TechCrunch:
Search any major Chinese city on Twitter, and you will see a cascade of spam tweets showing porn, escort services, and gambling content that are published every few seconds, making it impossible to get any legitimate results.
There has been a “significant uptick” in these tweets over the last three days, according to a China-focused data analyst. The surge in such bot content coincides with an unprecedented wave of protests that have swept across major Chinese cities and universities over the weekend.
The demonstrations are largely a result of China’s zero-tolerance approach toward COVID-19, a rare show of defiance amongst the people. The country’s stringent COVID restrictions have led to prolonged lockdowns across the country, obstructing life, business, and manufacturing activities.
I have to admit that I did not have “China uses porn to cover up protests” on my BINGO card. That is very novel. Now according to the article Twitter is aware of this. And as this morning I was not able to reproduce this while last night I was. Thus there’s apparently someone left at Twitter who can take care of an issue like this. But now that China has done something like this, you can expect others to try the same thing. And then we’ll see how serious Elon Musk is about fighting bots on Twitter.
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This entry was posted on November 28, 2022 at 8:42 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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China Seems To Be Using Porn To Cover Up News About Protests In Chinese Cities
The title sounds weird. But hang with me. It will make sense in the end. There have been protests in a variety of Chinese cities over China’s strict COVID lockdown protocols. And this seems to have made the government nervous enough to use a novel tactic to make sure that news about these protests don’t get out. Via TechCrunch:
Search any major Chinese city on Twitter, and you will see a cascade of spam tweets showing porn, escort services, and gambling content that are published every few seconds, making it impossible to get any legitimate results.
There has been a “significant uptick” in these tweets over the last three days, according to a China-focused data analyst. The surge in such bot content coincides with an unprecedented wave of protests that have swept across major Chinese cities and universities over the weekend.
The demonstrations are largely a result of China’s zero-tolerance approach toward COVID-19, a rare show of defiance amongst the people. The country’s stringent COVID restrictions have led to prolonged lockdowns across the country, obstructing life, business, and manufacturing activities.
I have to admit that I did not have “China uses porn to cover up protests” on my BINGO card. That is very novel. Now according to the article Twitter is aware of this. And as this morning I was not able to reproduce this while last night I was. Thus there’s apparently someone left at Twitter who can take care of an issue like this. But now that China has done something like this, you can expect others to try the same thing. And then we’ll see how serious Elon Musk is about fighting bots on Twitter.
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This entry was posted on November 28, 2022 at 8:42 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.