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Twitter suspends fake China accounts, updates state media advertising policies

Twitter Inc. said it suspended 936 fake accounts originating from within China that were in violation of its platform manipulation policies and were used in a state-backed operation to foment political discord and undermine the legitimacy of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.

In an Aug. 19 blog post, the U.S. social media giant shared some accounts that represented the most active portions of the campaign, and that "a larger, spammy network of approximately 200,000 accounts" were proactively suspended before they became substantially active.

Twitter said it identified large clusters of account that behaved in a coordinated method to intensify the impact of messages related to the protests. While Twitter is banned in China, some of the scrutinized accounts accessed the social platform using virtual private networks or through specific unblocked IP addresses in China, the company said.

In a similar move, Facebook Inc. also shut down a number of China-originated pages, groups and accounts involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior, removing seven pages, three groups and five accounts working as part of a small network focused on the Hong Kong protests.

Meanwhile, in a separate blog post, Twitter said it has updated its advertising policies with respect to state media and will not accept any advertisements from state controlled news media houses. The new policy is aimed at protecting "healthy discourse and open conversation." The policy will not apply to taxpayer-funded entities, including independent public broadcasters. Twitter's updated policies will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state.