Hundreds of Fake Twitter Accounts Linked to China Sowed Disinformation Prior to the US Election, Wit

[mountaineer]

Hundreds of Fake Twitter Accounts Linked to China Sowed Disinformation Prior to the US Election, With Some Continuing To Amplify Reactions to the Capitol Building Riot
Jan. 27, 2021
Crime and Security.org

A sophisticated China-linked social media operation played a key role in spreading disinformation during and after the US election, a report from Cardiff University concludes.

The study, from the Crime and Security Research Institute, shows evidence of the network’s activities reaching a wide audience, most successfully through a now debunked viral video that was later shared by Eric Trump, son of former US President Donald Trump, falsely showing ballots being burned on election day.

Researchers also found evidence of the same network spreading anti-US propaganda which amplified calls for violence before and after the Capitol riot in Washington on 6 January 2021.

Professor Martin Innes, Director of the Crime and Security Research Institute, who leads the Open Source Communications, Analytics Research (OSCAR) research team said: “Although only Twitter can fully certify an attribution, our analysis using open-source traces strongly suggests multiple links to China. Our initial findings suggested that the operation was not especially complex, but as we have dug deeper into the network, we have had to substantially revise our original view. The behaviour of the accounts was sophisticated and disciplined, and seemingly designed to avoid detection by Twitter’s counter-measures. There is at least one example of these accounts helping to propagate disinformation that went on to receive more than a million views.”  ...

There is strong evidence of links to China; posts include use of the Chinese language and a focus upon topics suited to Chinese geopolitical interests. More recent analysis shows the accounts were solely active in Chinese office hours; there was limited activity during a Chinese national holiday; and English language use appears to have been derived from machine translation tools.  ...

[mountaineer]

Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec
Cardiff University: Chinese social media influence operations included a repeated focus upon claiming Trump’s said that disinfectant / bleach is a treatment for Covid-19
3:53 PM · Jan 30, 2021·

Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec
Cardiff University: Chinese influence operations sowed calls for violence using fake Twitter accounts after Nov 3 election, posing as Trump supporters 

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1355619816489574400

[mountaineer]

Here's the full report from Cardiff University: Part 1 (28 pages)
Part 2 (20 pages)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report describes a network of Twitter accounts with links to China, detected engaging in an influence operation targeting US politics and Covid-19 in the immediate run-up to the US Presidential election:
★Seven days before the US presidential election, a network of over 500 accounts were detected engaging in co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour. Some accounts were operating in English language and others in Chinese, with matching personas.
★Preliminary analysis revealed 54 of the active English language accounts were engaging with a range of topics related to US politics and the election within the last month. There is evidence of them increasing their activity in the run-up to the election.
★These 54 accounts were forwarded to Twitter late-afternoon of 30/10/20 who suspended them all by the morning of 31/10/20. An additional 7 accounts that Twitter appear to have linked to the original set were also suspended.
★The 54 were selected on the basis of possessing the potential to pose a risk to the integrity of the election and because we had higher confidence that they were engaging in inauthentic co-ordinated behaviour.
★None of the accounts achieved much impact or engagement, and there is no evidence they have influenced events in the US based upon orthodox Twitter metrics. They may, however, have altered the content some users were exposed to by ‘gaming’ Twitter’s trending news algorithm.
★In terms of messaging content, there was both anti-Trump and anti-Biden sentiments, but with a greater volume of the former. It is inferred that they were activated as a response to President Trump’s various claims that coronavirus was caused by China. There was a repeated focus upon Trump’s claim that disinfectant / bleach is a treatment for Covid-19.
★The network was developed based on the likes of Chinese tweets that appeared to be artificially boosted. By mapping the recent liking behaviour of accounts involved with these tweets we were able to reveal the coordinated activity.
★The network of accounts were only discovered because they had engaged in historic patterns of suspicious ‘liking’ behaviours in 2019 and February 2020. Looking only at their more recent behaviour, it is unlikely they would have been connected.
★Only 1 pro-Trump account was identified in this network of 54 accounts. It is possible that accounts with a more pro-Trump political stance, run by the same or similar operators, exist but have not been picked up using the detection methodology described in the report.
  ★Several signature tactics were being used by the accounts of interest. First, a lot of their activity involved selectively liking or reposting mainstream media articles aligned with the politically partisan stance they were adopting (ie. anti-Trump or pro-Biden). This enabled them to engage in activity without having to ensure their English was of a good standard. There are some examples of them trying to author original content and the written English is almost non-sensical.
 â˜…More intriguingly, the reposting tactic may be designed to avoid platform detection algorithms that may focus more upon original messages. We have observed similar behaviour on Facebook, where disinformation is increasingly being inserted into comments to posts, rather than the posts themselves.
★Another tactic involved a clear division of labour between accounts in the network functioning as ‘authors’ and ‘amplifiers’. The smaller number of authoring accounts were responsible for posting new content. They were boosted by a larger number of ‘amplifier’ accounts acting in co-ordination with the ‘primes' ...

[christian]

With democrats being Xi dogs on a leash, and democrats wanting even more power, like a dictator, total .  We could just send the democrats home, out of work like they put us out of work, and declare Xi and/or Putin as our ruling monarch(s).  We could then declare democrats varmints...........

[Sled Dog]

A drop in the bucket compared to the concerted efforts of the DNC, CNN, MSNBC, Google, Twitter, Fakebook and Fox to peddle false information and stifle damaging stories.

About as relevant, in fact, as the $45,000 the Russian spent on disinformation in 2016.