“Since August 2019, ProPublica has tracked more than 10,000 suspected fake Twitter accounts involved in a coordinated influence campaign” with ties to the Chinese gov. that propagates propaganda & disinformation about things like COVID-19 & the HK protests https://www.propublica.org/article/how-china-built-a-twitter-propaganda-machine-then-let-it-loose-on-coronavirus

“ProPublica’s research tracked how the government-linked influence accounts that had targeted political dissidents and the Hong Kong protests turned their focus to the coronavirus outbreak. During the height of the epidemic in China, many of them became cheerleaders for the...

...government, calling on citizens to unite in support of efforts to fight the epidemic and urging them to “dispel online rumors.””

One post “in English trumpeted aid the Chinese government recently provided to Italy. It came from...an account that appears to have been an attempt to fool the casual reader into believing it was coming from the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia”.

“Others accounts we found have taken a darker turn in response to the pandemic, using it as a vehicle for disinformation and attacks on Beijing’s usual political opponents.”

“The true scale of the influence campaign is likely much bigger; our tracking suggests that the accounts we identified comprise only a portion of the operation.”

“Suspected Chinese operatives have stepped up their efforts in recent days, according to private messages shared with ProPublica, offering influential Chinese-speaking Twitter users cash for favorable posts.”

ProPublica’s “examination of an interlocking group of accounts within our data linked...[the campaign] to OneSight (Beijing) Technology Ltd., a Beijing-based internet marketing company.”

“OneSight, records show, held a contract to boost the Twitter following of China News Service, the country’s second-largest state-owned news agency. The news service operates under the United Front Work Department, an arm of the” CCP responsible for influence operations abroad.

OneSight’s clients include Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu, China News Service, China Daily, CGTN, and Xinhua News Agency.

It’s CEO, “who founded the company in October 2017..., is a social media entrepreneur who, according to media interviews, previously worked at the Beijing city foreign propaganda department.”

“OneSight’s product tutorials show a familiarity with coordinated campaigns and government entity clients. One post tells clients how to regain access to Facebook if an account is suspended for behavior violating the terms of service. Another...

...analyzed Huawei’s Facebook followers, implying that OneSight could make its social media fans look more natural and healthy. It also posted an analysis of how to make the social media followings of local governments appear more realistic.”

“Lotus Ruan, a researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and an expert on Chinese social media, explained that domestic censorship is “decentralized and fragmented, and the burden of information control is downloaded to private companies.””

“Government agencies rely on private companies for social media work outside of the Great Firewall as well.”

“On Twitter, [Chinese] government spokespeople have unapologetically spread disinformation about the coronavirus, even promoting the conspiracy theory that Americans brought it to Wuhan.”

For more on evidence cited by ProPublica linking this influence campaign and network to OneSight, see the original report included in the first tweet of this thread.