After Dr Tedros accused Taiwan of racial attacks against him, a bunch of accounts that were purporting to be Taiwanese netizens started apologising to Dr Tedros via the hashtag #saysrytoTedros.
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These accounts originally tweeted in simplified Chinese but tweeted these apologies using traditional characters.
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The first tweet occurred at 8:13pm AEST (6:13pm China Standard Time) on April 9th 2020 from the 'TMG News' account ( http://archive.vn/FSgC6 ):
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English Translation: “I am a Taiwanese, and I am extremely ashamed that the Taiwanese have attacked Tedros maliciously. On behalf of the Taiwanese, I apologize to Tedros and beg for his forgiveness. #saysrytoTedros @WHO"
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This was then retweeted by the accounts ‘RFXZ_China’ and ‘RCRC_Chinese’ followed by a stream of accounts copying the apology in Chinese and English until 5AM the next day.
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Overall, 65 unique accounts posted over 100 tweets ‘apologising’ on behalf of Taiwan over the period of 8PM to 5AM AEST.
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A graphical analysis of the following lists of the 65 accounts shows a cluster of common accounts. The graph below is arranged by the number of followers, where small white nodes represent accounts with little followers and the large orange circles show multiple followers.
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The most commonly followed accounts in the centre are ‘zlj517’ (Lijian Zhao), ‘SpokespersonCHN’ and ‘realdonaldtrump'. Other Chinese state associated accounts included in this cluster are: ‘mfa_china’, ‘cgntofficial’ and ‘xhnews’.
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Common features of these accounts indicate they might be inauthentic and part of a broader campaign. These features include:
1. Following Chinese state associated accounts e.g. ‘zlj517’, ‘SpokespersonCHN’...

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2. Following popular Western accounts but not other non-celebrity or genuine accounts
3. Limited accounts following back
4. Recent creation dates
5. Periods of inactivity and inconsistent activity, and
6. Retweets of known trolls or propaganda outlets.

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