Move over Russia, hold your horses Gambia, China is the new bot on the block and they are taking over Twitter with military precision.
Every Twitter user by now has seen the typical Gambian bot. Once you know what to look for, they are very easy to recognize. An account that recently joined Twitter, usually with a bunch of numbers in the username, 0 to 8 tweets (usually in bad English, or nonsensical), following hundreds but followed by few, and a profile pic and background pic of some impoverished person or family in an African village. Often they include Christian imagery or Bible quotes, and very often pleas for help and/or sympathy. (Think “I am a poor orphan” or “my little sister has no food” etc) . They target specific groups to follow, for instance people with “Resist” in their bios.
Chinese bots are harder to spot, and more sophisticated.
The typical Chinese bot is a different kettle of fish altogether. These are not new/recent accounts, but repurposed accounts: meaning older, established accounts that have been hacked. The followers are left intact, but the tweets have been purged. New tweets (once added) are in Chinese. They usually have some “deep and meaningful” quote in the bio. There is no need for them to infiltrate by following other accounts, as they are already following and followed by many, giving them more credibility than for instance the Gambian bots. Some tweet in English, notably accounts dedicated to “Stop Asian Hate”.
Chinese bots are actively infiltrating Resister accounts.
While I was writing this, I was followed by a huge account (following 64.9K, followed by 43K). I vet all accounts before following back, and got started on who follows it. After finding about one hundred repurposed Chinese bots, I switched to checking who it follows. The first thing I noticed was that, in the less than half an hour since following me, it had also followed 115 other accounts (some of whom I follow), all stating in their bios that they are Resisters, or otherwise blue-check Democrat accounts. This is an obvious case of mass-infiltration. In the accounts it follows are the same hundred or so repurposed Chinese bots that I’d found in the followers, and probably thousands more if I were to continue vetting. They probably also infiltrate MAGA accounts, I would have to check.
From Click Farms to Bot Farms — the evolving threat
The phenomenon isn’t new. Chinese Click Farms have been around for years. A Click Farm is basically a room with a number of iPhones and Androids connected in a network, and a few programmers operating them from terminals. The number of phones varies, it’s not unusual for an operation to have thousands of phones connected to the Internet. Initially, it was a simple case of adding likes and/or comments to a client’s Social Media posts. Clients were usually businesses selling a service or product. Here is some further reading on Click Farms:
finance.yahoo.com/…
Click Farms Weaponized
The Click Farm, though hugely irritating, isn’t very sinister — it’s mainly a private enterprise for financial gain. The new wave (or should I say tsunami) of repurposed Chinese bots is a different story though. With ideology thrown into the mix, this is more like cyber-warfare. From translating the tweets, I’ve discerned 3 major groups of bots — though interconnected, they have three very specific areas of focus:
- Glorification of the Chinese regime
- COVID (dis)information
- The “Stop Asian Hate” group.
Here is an article on the role of Chinese Bot Farms in the COVID narrative:
www.propublica.org/...
The last group I find the most worrisome. Many Resisters sympathetic to the cause follow them blindly. While the previous two groups tweet mainly in Chinese, they tweet in English, and seem like totally legitimate accounts of concerned Asians in America. They infiltrate easily and effortlessly. The sad fact is that bots draw more bots — once a person follows one, they are likely to follow another, because the bots all follow each other — it’s a matter of “hey, I’ve got another follower, and we have a mutual acquaintance so it’s safe to follow back”.
Twitter is banned in China. It’s possible to use government-approved VPNs to access Twitter, but government-approved also means government-controlled. I seriously doubt that these repurposed accounts are the work of some nefarious individuals, it’s much more likely that the operation is orchestrated by Beijing, possibly even Military in nature. As we saw in the run-up to the 2016 election, Russian bots played a huge destabilizing and polarizing role, and contributed significantly to Trump’s victory. My fear is that these firmly embedded and accepted Chinese bots will do the same in the coming elections.