Cybersecurity
China’s Disinformation Effort Targets Virus, Researcher Says
- Researcher says more than 1,000 Twitter accounts in operation
- U.S. has accused China of trying to reshape Covid-19 narrative
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An army of bot accounts linked to an alleged Chinese government-backed propaganda campaign is spreading disinformation on social media about coronavirus and other topics, including an exiled businessman, according to a London-based researcher.
The accounts have been used to promote content attacking critics of the Chinese government and to spread conspiracy theories blaming the U.S. for the origins of virus, according to Benjamin Strick, who specializes in analyzing information operations on social media websites.