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The two censored social networks in mainland China directly blame the Chinese government for a misinformation campaign against Hong Kong protesters orchestrated via a thousand "fake Twitter accounts" and "fake pages" Facebook. Yet this is only the immersed part of a vast propaganda system.
In China, they are still called " wu mao dang ", literally " the 50 cents yuan party ", the price once paid to post a favorable comment to the government or to relay the messages of propaganda. These Net soldiers, mostly working under pseudo, post nearly 500 million messages each year, said researchers at Harvard University in 2016.
VPN to bypass censorship
To spread these same messages abroad, Chinese propaganda needs to go through censored social networks in mainland China. " I estimate several hundreds of thousands the number of " wu mao dang " in China, says Gao Yu. To go on Twitter and Facebook, they use VPN " - digital tunnels to bypass the "great wall" computer - says the journalist, who says she is regularly attacked by Chinese trolls.
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" On Twitter, there are two kinds of " wu mao dang ", she continues. A party is responsible for attacking opponents, sometimes using a crude vocabulary. The other group is people who have received training. Among them, there are many police officers of the internet. They spread fake news , or messages defending China and the party. Chinese propaganda is as powerful today as during the religious revolution. "
Networks, battlegrounds of opinion
Reinforced training for netminders because in a speech made public in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the Internet had become " the main battleground of the debate of opinion ". To feed the 936 accounts closed by Twitter or the 7 pages deleted by Facebook , it is necessary to be able to speak in English on foreign networks.
But the Chinese regime is no longer a paradox. Despite the fact that Twitter and Facebook are censored in mainland China, in the last ten years most major Chinese media have opened official accounts to distribute their content abroad. The China New Agency (Xinhua) or Central Television of China does not hesitate to "sponsor" some of their tweets in order to gain more audience.
IP unlocked
The use of "false accounts" would be more recent. In its statement, the management of Twitter claims to have identified " large sets of accounts acting in a coordinated manner, so as to amplify their messages on the Hong Kong protests ."
The California company also points out that it has " reliable evidence " to assert " that it is a transaction supported by the Chinese state ." Many of the administrators of these accounts have been able to access Twitter and Facebook from China via VPNs, the use of which is forbidden to the Chinese. But other accounts, still according to Twitter, had them IP addresses unlocked in the People's Republic of China, a right that can only come from the authorities.