Crackdown on Chinese accounts shows US social media giants becoming ‘more proactive’
- Speed and coordination of response by Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to alleged disinformation campaign on Hong Kong protests ‘not seen before’
- Pressure from US, European Council and others has pushed them to do more to monitor politically motivated and state-sponsored activities, analysts say
The swift crackdown on an alleged disinformation campaign linked to Hong Kong’s anti-government protests shows social media platforms Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are becoming more proactive about dismantling influence operations, according to analysts.
They cited the contrast between the speedy, synchronised move by the US companies and their track record of combating such activity on their platforms.
Pressure from the United States, the European Council and others to root out political disinformation, and the release of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in April detailing Russia’s use of social media to meddle in the 2016 US elections, had pushed the platforms to do more to monitor politically motivated and state-sponsored activities, they said.
“We haven’t seen this kind of speed and coordination before [from the platforms], it’s always been dragging and kicking social media companies to do something – here they seem to have been more proactive. The explanation has to be more than technical, and it has to be more than geopolitical,” said David Fidler, adjunct senior fellow for cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
He noted that the move was made within the context of a strong US agenda to counter China’s global influence and cyber capabilities.
“If you connect improved business understanding and technical capabilities with a long-standing monitoring of these companies’ relationships with China, you can see that the groundwork was in place for a swifter response than we’ve seen on anything else,” Fidler said.