Chinese Accounts Spammed Twitter Feed Allegedly to Obscure News of Protests

On Sunday, numerous Chinese-language Twitter accounts, some dormant for months or years, began spamming the platform with links to escort services and adult content alongside Chinese city names. This coordinated campaign made it impossible for users searching for posts about widespread protests against coronavirus restrictions in Chinese cities to find relevant information, as search results were flooded with spam content instead of news about the protests. The incident occurred while Twitter's anti-propaganda team had been drastically reduced following mass layoffs and resignations that cut staff from approximately 7,500 to 2,000 employees. Groups dealing with human rights issues, safety concerns, and deceptive foreign influence operations were reduced to a handful of people or eliminated entirely. According to a former Twitter employee, all China influence operations analysts had resigned. The campaign was identified by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions. A current Twitter employee confirmed the company was aware of the problem by midday and was working to resolve it. By late Sunday, protest-related content began appearing in search results again, though one expert described the results as 'fifty percent porn, fifty percent protests' with earlier content still dominated by spam.