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Hong Kong protests
OpinionLetters

Letters | I’m not a Chinese bot or troll. Why is Twitter silencing my criticism of lawlessness in Hong Kong?

  • In cracking down on a Chinese disinformation campaign, Twitter might be blocking accounts indiscriminately

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A woman takes a selfie in front of a man holding the Chinese flag during a rally in Hong Kong on August 17. Twitter says it has suspended more than 200,000 accounts it believes were part of a Chinese government campaign targeting the protests in Hong Kong. Photo: AP
Letters
Simone McCarthy (“Why Facebook and Twitter cracked down on Chinese state attacks on Hong Kong protesters”, August 23) should continue to track how many accounts in total these social media giants – especially Twitter — blocked on the pretext that they were part of an “alleged disinformation campaign linked to Hong Kong’s anti-government protests” and how many voices were suppressed because they were critical of vandalism and lawlessness. These are independent voices which offer an alternative to the Western media’s partisan reporting.

I was one of the victims of this crackdown on supposed Chinese accounts. Last Sunday, Twitter blocked my account claiming “unusual activity” and “objectionable content” and then asking for a mobile number as proof that my account was not a fake account, when the company would have been aware from the last round of blocking in April that I do not carry a mobile phone and they could have easily verified my account via a call to my land lines or an email with a code.

All I had done was criticise lawlessness – blocking of transport at will, surrounding and attacking police stations, such as Tsim Sha Tsui station near my home – and, this is important, post quotes from the Post’s live feed, reports and columns, and contrast them with quotes from The New York Times, Financial Times and The Economist, especially with regard to reports on the beating of two mainland men at the airport on August 13.
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When I asked, via Twitter’s “help” function, what exactly the “objectionable content” and “unusual activity” related to my account was, I was given no explanation except the same computer-generated replies.

I have absolutely no links to China and Twitter has no proof of anything other than that I am critical of the violence unleashed by these radicals as covered every weekend by the Post and witnessed first-hand for two weekends near my home. Twitter is suiting its own political and ideological bias, yet nobody in the media, which has mostly given favourable coverage to these steps, is asking how many social media accounts in total have been unfairly blocked and silenced on this pretext?

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Gopi Maliwal, Jordan

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