Here’s what Twitter and others discovered about China’s 50-Cent Army.
It may be hard to believe, but Twitter
TWTR has helped take down what has been called the Wu Mao army, or the 50-Cent Army of pro-China, anti-Trump, anti-Hong Kong protester Twitter accounts that made Russia’s 2016 influence campaign on Facebook look like child’s play.
The “50 Cent Army” is a group of state-backed internet commenters whose numbers have reportedly ranged from 500,000 to two million, the U. S. government funded Voice of America wrote in October 2016. The root of the nickname – the idea that the government pays 50 renminbi per pro-China post – was debunked as conspiracy.
Wu Mao is considered a common online insult in China’s social media lexicon, but they’re real and they got revealed by Twitter on Friday.
What Twitter Did
On Friday, Twitter said it found 32,242 accounts and listed them as foreign state-linked information operations. The account sets we’re publishing to the archive on Friday, the only archive of foreign agents on social media.
All the accounts were linked to China, Russia, and Turkey. And all of them were permanently removed from Twitter.
Accounts were suspended for various violations of their platform manipulation policies.
Twitter said it found 23,750 accounts that comprise the core of the China network, those who were most active in posting.
Around 150,000 other accounts were set up to boost those 23,000, serving as amplifiers of the message.
The main messenger accounts — the 23,750 Twitter users — were caught early and “failed to achieve considerable traction on the service, typically holding low follower accounts and low engagement,” Twitter said.
