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Information operations directed at Hong Kong

(blog.twitter.com)
1116 points whatok | 2 comments | 19 Aug 19 18:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.661s | source
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mortenjorck ◴[19 Aug 19 19:00 UTC] No.20740690[source]▶
The elephant left standing in the room is not the spam and bot accounts, but the official, state-actor accounts such as Xinhua News that pay for promoted tweets carrying the same message.

Granted this is likely beyond the scope of Twitter’s safety team, but this completely sidesteps the issues raised here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/twitter-is-blocked-in-chin...

replies(2): >>20740717 #>>20740809 #
martey ◴[19 Aug 19 19:03 UTC] No.20740717[source]▶
See https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/advertisi..., which was posted to the Twitter blog at approximately the same time as this post.
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davedx ◴[19 Aug 19 19:17 UTC] No.20740858[source]▶
Very curious which entities get blocked by this policy.

Fox News? The Telegraph?

replies(2): >>20741037 #>>20741084 #
isostatic ◴[19 Aug 19 19:42 UTC] No.20741084[source]▶
it’s in TFA

“This policy will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state. It has been informed by established academic and civil society leaders in this space. Sources include Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, the European Journalism Centre’s Media Landscapes Report, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and UNESCO's framework to assess media development and independence.”

Fox News is not controlled by the state (if anything it’s the other way round)

Neither is the telegraph

Neither is the BBC

replies(1): >>20741406 #
1. proaralyst ◴[19 Aug 19 20:18 UTC] No.20741406[source]▶
The BBC is financially controlled by the state. The Telegraph has nothing to do with the state, however.
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2. egwor ◴[19 Aug 19 21:17 UTC] No.20741915[source]▶
I thought the BBC was independent. However, "BBC licence fee receipts and expenditure: The Treasury manages public spending within two ‘control totals’ of about equal size..." https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/...