Chinese bots flood Twitter in attempt to obscure Covid protests
by Dan Milmo and Helen Davidson in Taipei from Technology | The Guardian on (#6692V)
Activity indicates first major failure' to stop government interference under ownership of Elon Musk
Twitter has been flooded with nuisance posts designed to obscure news of the coronavirus lockdown protests in China, in an apparent state-directed attempt to suppress footage of the demonstrations.
Chinese bot accounts - not operated by humans - are being used to flood the social networking service with adverts for sex workers, pornography and gambling when users search for a major city in the country, such as Shanghai or Beijing, using Chinese script.
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