In a blow to Beijing's influence campaign, Twitter deletes over 170,000 accounts for spreading Chinese government narratives

China is a leader in pandemic response, Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen is a swindler, support ruling Hong Kong by law, and pro-democracy protesters are American puppets.

This is dirty Chinese propaganda and Twitter is trying to block it. The social media platform deleted more than 170,000 accounts linked to the Chinese government.

Twitter said it had dismantled "Chinese state-linked" networks run by a "highly engaged core" of 23,750 accounts and boosted by a further 150,000 "amplifier" accounts.

So far -- this is the biggest clean-up of Chinese fake news on any social media platform. China has been caught peddling deceitful propaganda. A vast majority of these accounts had few or no followers at all.

But they had a high level of engagement this meant -- the Chinese government is using an internet bot to boost its propaganda tweets most of these accounts were hacked or bought.

They were used to twist the narrative in china's favour. The tweets mostly cover four major themes first -- China leading the global response to the pandemic. Tweets showing Chinese healthcare workers sending testing kits and medical aid workers around the world. Posts claiming China's pandemic response was the best in the world.

Stealing credit from Taiwan second theme -- targeting Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen posts like these. Safe Tsai Ing-wen, prosperous people can cure the Tsai Ing-wen disease. Tweets calling the Taiwan president a swindler.

Third theme discrediting Hong Kong’s protestor’s posts said trump is interfering in Hong Kong linking pro-democracy activists to the US government.

Cultural Revolution-style cartoons depicted activists as traitors. The worst is the image that shows protesters as cockroaches fourth theme targeting America highlighting the anti-racism riots one image showed the statue of liberty kneeling on George Floyd’s neck there were posts accusing the US of hypocrisy for its criticism of the Hong Kong police the list of china's propaganda tweets is a very long one the clean-up has begun.