Over 900 Chinese Social media accounts disabled over ‘deceptive tactics’

Facebook and Twitter announced Monday that they had disabled hundreds of accounts of related to a state-backed social media campaign that originated in mainland China, all of which looked to undermine protests in Hong Kong.

Twitter said in a blog post that it had suspended 936 accounts that originated within China.

In a similar blog post, Facebook said that it, too, had closed five accounts, seven pages and three groups that were part of a small network associated with individuals connected to the Chinese government.

“The individuals behind this campaign engaged in a number of deceptive tactics, including the use of fake accounts — some of which had been already disabled by our automated systems — to manage pages posing as news organizations, post in Groups, disseminate their content, and also drive people to off-platform news sites,” wrote Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy.

Currently, both of the social media platforms are blocked in China, but many of the accounts were able to receive access due to the use of VPNs, according to Twitter’s statement.

The 936 suspended Twitter accounts were the most active of a “larger, spammy network” that totalled 200,000 accounts.