Twitter does not show news about China's COVID policy protest
There has been some protests regarding the China's COVID policy in China, but looks like platform does not show it.
If you look for information about China's growing protests on Twitter, you won't have much success. Analysts have noticed a rise in bots selling porn and gambling around these queries. The spam is making it harder to follow the rallies, especially for local activists who use a VPN to access Twitter in order to circumvent censorship on domestic social networks by the Chinese government.
Twitter does not show news about China's COVID policy protest
Thread: Search for Beijing/Shanghai/other cities in Chinese on Twitter and you'll mostly see ads for escorts/porn/gambling, drowning out legitimate search results.
— Air-Moving Device (@AirMovingDevice) November 28, 2022
Data analysis in this thread suggests that there has been a *significant* uptick in these spam tweets. pic.twitter.com/Ao46g2ILzf
Twitter has not officially commented on the situation and has effectively disbanded its communications team. However, a Twitter employee told a researcher that the company is "working to resolve" the bot issue, according to The Washington Post. By the end of Sunday, it was easier to find information about the protests, but spam was still clogging up results.According to a former employee who spoke with The Post, government-linked Twitter accounts have previously engaged in mass spamming, but typically only to target specific accounts or small groups.
