Pornographic Ads In Twitter Are Obscuring Reports About The White Paper Revolution Ignited By The Xinjiang Fire

On November 29th, media around the globe are reporting the fire in a lockdown high-rising building in Urumqi, Xinjiang on November 24th have ignited the “White Paper Revolution”, which are gaining traction in many parts of China. But on November 27th, large number of pornographic contents began to flood the social media platform Twitter. As a result, users who try to learn what was happening in Xinjiang and the protests elsewhere by searching found themselves looking at pornographic contents instead. An expert of China’s problem pointed out that when he checked Twitter posts early on November 27th, about half of them were pornographic and the other half were about protests. But when he scrolled down and checked the earlier posts, he found almost all posts are pornographic ads. A research institution noted about this unusual pattern that over 95% of these posts are from spam accounts, which has been dormant for years until November 27th. This pattern of spamming activity was identified and being investigated on November 27th. According to a Twitter employee, this tactic has been used previously but was known to only target individuals or small organizations.