Twitter Must Tackle a Problem Far Bigger Than Bots
Targeted harassment and asymmetric information warfare pose an existential crisis for social media platforms.
Coordinated campaign.
Source: Bloomberg
For years, anyone covering China as a journalist, researcher or public policy maker has had to deal with the issue of trolls, fake accounts, copycats and harassment on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Recently it’s been getting worse, and for a growing number of female writers of Asian descent it has become particularly aggressive and malicious.
New research released last week connected the dots for what most active Twitter writers in the region already knew: There’s an ongoing, sophisticated and coordinated campaign being waged by Chinese Communist Party-linked operatives against a core group of women who cover China.