Information operations directed at Hong Kong

Good on Twitter and Facebook.

On top of blocking thousands of websites (which includes Facebook, Google, Twitter) China's government employs thousands of government employees just to purge even the most mild criticism of the CCP on Weibo [1]. They also employ tens of thousands to export their propaganda overseas, using sock puppet accounts to push their worldview[2]. And their worldview is fiercely anti-democratic.

The Internet cannot remain free if we allow governments to use their power to control narratives and suppress the truth. US-based Social media companies are not ideal judges, but at least they publish their methodology and allow public criticism of their platforms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sina_Weibo#Censorship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

The internet is already not free for much of the world. It's depressing to type this but China successfully created a parallel version of the internet that is anything but free. That model got exported and now you see the same approach being taken across the world. The direction we seem to be heading in is one where the world's collective internet systems are effectively Balkanized.

As the article says, "Twitter is blocked in PRC". Probably an own-goal in situations like this, since the army of Chinese-government loyalists can't be fully unleashed upon the world. The people of China generally seem pretty loyal to its government, but I'm unsure how much that is due to constant monitoring and systems like "social credit".