Chinese bots swamp Twitter with porn to block protest news

Massive protests against COVID lockdown measures are taking place across China

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Chinese bots are swamping Twitter with sexually explicit posts about porn and escorts in an apparent bid to stop the spread of news about the massive protests against lockdowns and President Xi Jinping.

Searches for major Chinese cities that have seen mass protests will “mostly see ads for escorts/porn/gambling, drowning out legitimate search results,” said Air-Moving Device, sharing a series of charts.

“Data analysis in this thread suggests that there has been a significant uptick in these spam tweets,” the outlet said, sharing data retweeted by Stanford Internet Observatory director Alex Stamos.

The “vast majority” — more than 95% — appear to be spam accounts that “tweet at a high, steady rate throughout the day, suggesting automation,” the analysis said.

Some of the NSFW images shared by apparent Chinese bots. — The porn and escort ads came from accounts that had been dormant until they started posting thousands of messages once protests broke out, the analysis showed.

Some of the NSFW images shared by apparent Chinese bots. — Many of the racy images came up when searching news on cities embroiled by protests, the analysis showed.

Some of the NSFW images shared by apparent Chinese bots. — The “vast majority” — more than 95% — appear to be spam accounts that “tweet at a high, steady rate throughout the day, suggesting automation,” Air-Moving Device said.

Some of the NSFW images shared by apparent Chinese bots. — The research was shared by Stanford University researchers as well as a former US diplomat.

Some of the NSFW images shared by apparent Chinese bots. — “Sadly if a Chinese person decides to come to Twitter to find out what happened in China last night, these [not safe for work] nsfw posts shared by bots are likely the first to show up in their search results,” Stanford University’s Mengyu Dong wrote.

Stanford University’s Mengyu Dong shared images of some of the dubious “escort ads,” which she said “make it more difficult for Chinese users to access information about the mass protests.”

“Some of these acts have been dormant for years, only to become active … after protests broke out in China,” she tweeted.

One account started seven years ago was found to have sent all of its more than 2,000 texts within the last 15 hours. Another had only posted four tweets “AND suddenly posted 3000+ nsfw tweets in ONE day,” she wrote.

“Sadly if a Chinese person decides to come to Twitter to find out what happened in China last night, these nsfw [not suitable for work] posts shared by bots are likely the first to show up in their search results,” she wrote.

Retired US diplomat David Cowhig questioned whether it was proof that “Chinese net censors” were “posting great numbers of sexy photos to distract people from Wuhan protests” or “just to jam the channel?”

The use of spam to stop the spread of damaging information is a “known problem” within Twitter, one ex-staffer involved in the mass exodus after Elon Musk’s takeover told the Washington Post.

The mass spamming was another example of “where there are now even larger holes to fill” in the social media giant after it lost key staff, including those monitoring deceptive foreign influence operations, the staffer claimed.

“All the China influence operations and analysts at Twitter all resigned,” the unidentified ex-Twitter staffer told the DC paper.

Chinese state media has also made no mention of the protests, which have been unprecedented since the army crushed the student-led pro-democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The uprising started after anger at the ongoing “Zero COVID” policy was blamed for killing at least 10 people in an apartment building in Urumqi, where some residents have been locked in their homes for four months.

That prompted an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters or people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other pandemic restrictions.

People took to the streets across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, where COVID first emerged nearly three years ago.

On Sunday in Shanghai, some protesters briefly chanted anti-Xi slogans, almost unheard of in a country where Xi has a level of power unseen since Mao Zedong’s era.

In response, police used pepper spray to drive away demonstrators, and dozens were detained in police sweeps and taken away in police vans and buses. China’s vast internal security apparatus is also famed for identifying people it considers troublemakers and picking them up later when few are watching.

The cries for the resignation of Xi and the end of the Communist Party that has ruled China for 73 years could be deemed sedition, which is punishable by prison.

With Post wires