Dozens of pro-China Twitter accounts outed by Free Tibet as fakes

[uhnope]

Source: LA TIMES

What the world knew about him from his online persona, Tom Hugo, was that he looked like Adonis in a swimsuit and hated the Dalai Lama. Alayna Newark, with beautiful blond curls and cleavage, had strong feelings about China’s right to the East China Sea islands disputed by Japan.

They were among dozens of fake pro-Chinese Twiteratti whose accounts were suspended Tuesday after being outed the day before by Free Tibet, a London-based advocacy organization. Curious about the people who were most prolifically tweeting pro-Chinese political messages, Free Tibet discovered they were fictitious personae created out of appealing photographs plucked from the Internet. @Tomhugo148, for example, used the photograph of a Brazilian underwear model. @Alayna Newark used the photograph of a Canadian actress.

Alistair Currie, Free Tibet media manager, said that circumstantial evidence points to the Chinese government as the perpetrator behind the phony accounts. "It is impossible to imagine anybody else who would be behind it given the nature of the messaging," said Currie.

Beijing is notorious for propagating positive messaging on bulletin boards and chat rooms. In fact, the government's messengers are known as the “50-cent party’’ because they are reportedly paid half of one Chinese yuan (the equivalent of 8 cents) per message. But the network uncovered by Free Tibet appears to be one of the most extensive targeting the Western Internet.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-twitter-taiwan-20140722-story.html

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Probably all over popular political websites too.

[MADem]

1. Gee, I'm shocked...SHOCKED, I tell you....that one-note wonders banging the drum on a single issue

might be ... fakes!!!

Who KNEW....??????


Eight cents a message, eh? Talk about selling oneself cheaply! I wonder how much Putin is paying...?

[davidpdx]

6. You beat me to it

Headline:

Dozens of pro-Russian users on DU outted

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. I'm old enough to remember when all the women online were secretly dudes.

[merrily]

2. Good thing the USG would never do anything remotely similar.

Although, given how much the USG, like any national government, has always propagandized its citizens with impunity, I have to wonder what prompted this.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/12/us_backs_off_propaganda_ban_spreads_government_made_news_to_americans

But surely, no social media communications are coming from the USG or anyone it pays.

[uhnope]

4. your link is behind a paywall but no, USA does not equal China

it's a mystery why so many people must make the false equivalency between the USA and a place like China or Russia or North Korea.

To my knowledge, the US gov has been very careful not to do this, and has studied how not to let its foreign PR efforts (where it does have US gov folks in chat rooms trying to talk young would-be terrorists out of the "Great Satan" thing) come back into the US.

Orwell:
“The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …”

[merrily]

8. Paywall disappeared for me with a click. (You gave no link at all.)

But, news of the Act is easily googled anyway.

If you show me where I said the US = China, I won't accuse you of building a giant straw man. FYI: "Nothing remotely similar" does not set up any kind of equivalency at all, real or false and every comparison, express or implied, no matter how slight does not amount to an equivalency.

To my knowledge, the US gov has been very careful not to do this,

You will also have to tell me the source of your inside knowledge of the activities of the US that it does not, for obvious reasons, make public.

Orwell? The one who died in 1950? The one who thought that only Russia would do things like the NSA does? That Orwell?

[uhnope]

11. here's one link

it's all I have time for right now http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/world/us-military-goes-online-to-rebut-extremists.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

It sounds like a good program that tries to use facts and calm rationality to defeat extremism, in no way comparable to what China is doing.

I don't have time to dig for the other articles, which I believe went back to the Bush era, and involved the planting of stories into foreign press and the possibility that those stores would then be picked up and carried in the US, which was considered a problem since agencies like the CIA can't propagandize the American people like that. In the US, there's a dialogue about this, that's the point.

There's really no hint that the US gov is using sock puppets in the US for political purposes, and in this day and age I think it would be leaked/exposed and all over the news.

I think you also need to re-examine the NSA revelations, which I think are totally overblown. Again, you are comparing Russia with the USA in terms of surveillance and police state tactics? Really, you need to learn more about that.

[uhnope]

12. OK I got around the paywall

Seriously? Allowing Somali immigrants in the USA to listen to VOA Somalia. That's the scary propaganda that I'm supposed to be alarmed about?

I'm wondering if you read your own link. Despite the sensational headline, there's not much there. The examples of "propaganda" are way off--private contractors in a twitter war with journalists, a recommendation that maybe the US gov would want to post comments on an American Somali website.

Again, you said this is at least "remotely similar" to the Chinese dictatorship's campaign against a free Tibet and the Dalai Lama. Really?

[merrily]

13. Geez. The point of the link was to show the existence of the Act itself.

[delrem]

3. dozens of twits are fakes!! WOW! I never thought I'd live to see the day!

[yuiyoshida]

5. Not really surprised by this, and infact

would almost expect it.

[Hekate]

9. They used to hang out at DU prior to Twitter

I remember them well.

[Sunlei]

10. good of 'Britts for a Free Tibet' to expose all Chinas fake accounts & scams.Need them in the USA!