It’s Another Perfect Day in Tibet!
BEIJING
— There’s a lot to admire about Tom Hugo, and not just the washboard
abs that are a glaring feature of his Twitter account profile photo.
For
starters, Tom Hugo seems to be well-versed in Chinese, and he evidently
cares deeply about the Tibetan people, judging from the profusion of
messages he has posted on Twitter in recent months: There are
photographs of Tibetans in “unique exotic dress,” articles showcasing
the Tibetan people’s deep appreciation for China’s governance of the
region and video clips that portray happy Tibetans singing and dancing on state-run television.
“Tibetans hail bumper harvest of highland barley,” read the headline on one recent posting.
There’s only one problem with Tom Hugo’s Twitter account: It’s fake.
The visage accompanying the account belongs to a Brazilian model named Felipe Berto, and nearly every video, article and photograph the ersatz Tom Hugo tweets comes via propaganda websites linked to the Chinese government.
The ruse is not an isolated one. In recent days, Free Tibet,
an advocacy group based in London, has identified nearly 100 similar
sham accounts whose sole purpose appears to be disseminating upbeat news
and treacly stories about Tibet and Xinjiang, the region in far-western
China whose native Uighurs, like the Tibetans, have bridled under
Beijing’s heavy-handed rule.
“When
it comes to Tibet, nothing that China does surprises us, but this
appears to be something new,” said Alistair Currie, the media manager
for Free Tibet, who says the group’s researchers have stumbled upon
hundreds of other Twitter accounts they believe were also created to
spread China’s view on a number of contentious issues. “It’s an
insidious effort to change the message and muddy the waters about
Tibet.”
Although
there is no direct evidence to link the Chinese government to the phony
accounts, the content and breadth of the effort would suggest the
involvement of a state actor. The subterfuge is not dissimilar to that
carried out by members of China’s so-called Fifty Cent Party, the
government-paid lurkers who earn 0.5 renminbi per posting on Internet
message boards and chat rooms in an attempt to sway public opinion on
issues deemed politically delicate by the Communist Party. “I genuinely
struggle to think of anyone else who would stand to gain from this,” Mr.
Currie said of the fake Twitter accounts.
An employee of Wuzhou Media Corporation, the Beijing company that creates the websites
often featured in such tweets, said he knew nothing about the bogus
accounts. But in an interview, he suggested that such tactics fit in
well with the company’s mission of producing propaganda tailored to
Western audiences. “We use a tone and style that’s easier for foreigners
to accept,” said the employee, who would give only his surname, Yu. The
company, he said, has a staff of nearly 300 people.
The
Foreign Ministry and the State Council Information Office, the
government agency that regulates the Internet in China, did not
immediately respond to interview requests on Monday.
The
use of fake Twitter accounts would also appear to dovetail with China’s
increasingly sophisticated effort to present the country in a more
flattering light while trying to bring the world around to its point of
view on thorny issues, among them the continuing territorial dispute
with Japan and widespread perception in the West that China restricts
religious freedom and represses ethnic minorities like Tibetans and
Uighurs.
In
recent years, the government has sprinkled hundreds of college campuses
across the globe with Confucius Institutes and financed overseas newscasts
of the national broadcaster CCTV in a half-dozen languages. In the most
recent soft power push, state-owned film companies have formed a
partnership with Hollywood to produce blockbusters like “Transformers:
Age of Extinction” that feature Chinese actors.
But
when it comes to leveraging Western social media outlets like Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube — all of which are blocked here — Beijing’s efforts
would appear to be a bit ham-handed. On Twitter, many of the fake
accounts identified by Free Tibet use stock images or headshots found on
the sites of commercial photographers in the United States. Others
employ the likenesses of actors like Erica Durance, who played Lois Lane in the television series “Smallville,” or in one case, Syd Barrett, the lead vocalist of Pink Floyd, who died in 2006. Oddly, many of the Twitter handles, like Oliver Nina, Felix James and Philomena Rebecca, appear to be created through the combination of two first names. Nearly all the profile images are those of Caucasians.
Kirsten Kowalski,
a photographer from suburban Atlanta, was dismayed to learn that a
portrait she had taken of a high school student ended up as Lydia May, a woman who, judging from her tweets, was peeved by the Dalai Lama’s visit to the United States this year but also thrilled to share with her followers an article titled “Xinjiang eyes housing, education for poverty mitigation.”
“It’s
not like she’s being used to promote horrible stuff, but it’s still her
likeness and she’s just a teenager,” Ms. Kowalski said by phone. “It’s
kind of bizarre, and frustrating. And it’s also illegal, at least in the
United States.”
Fake
accounts on Twitter are not new; some experts estimate that as many as 9
percent of all Twitter handles are made up, although the company says
the figure is under 5 percent, according to its securities filings. Jim
Prosser, a spokesman for Twitter, said the company works hard to weed
out illegitimate accounts and sometimes takes legal action against those
who abuse its rules. “We have a variety of automated and manual
controls we constantly use to detect, flag and suspend accounts created
solely for spam purposes,” he said in an email.
It’s
hard to say whether the counterfeit Twitter accounts that disseminate
pro-Chinese propaganda are having the desired impact. Tom Hugo, the
shirtless wonder, has more than 2,600 followers, but many appear to be
fellow fraudsters who retweet the same material. One recent tweet, an article that described the Dalai Lama as a “chess piece” used by the United States to contain China, was retweeted 6,500 times.
Most of the accounts, however, are more like that of the putative Felix James,
who has just a few dozen followers and who seems to rarely get retweets
of his bland postings about tourist attractions in Tibet (although
perhaps it’s because his profile photo, a man with a cellphone glued to
his ear, is a stock advertising image that can be found on scores of
websites, including those selling curtains, shipping containers and
telecommunications software).
In
interviews, several genuine Twitter users who follow the fake ones said
they were not entirely surprised to learn they were following pro-China
propagandists. Some, like Scott Eddy, a consultant
who helps entrepreneurs expand their social media footprint, said they
simply follow anyone who agrees to follow them. “I’m pretty aggressive
when it comes to building a fan base,” Mr. Eddy, an American who lives
in Bangkok, said in explaining how he ended up with 479,000 Twitter
followers.
Asked
whether he thought the creative minds behind the false pro-China
Twitter accounts were on to something, Mr. Eddy laughed. With so many
followers, he screens out all but the most compelling followers from his
timeline, ensuring that the fraudsters end up tweeting into a black
hole. “I want as big a stage as absolutely possible,” he said, “but that
doesn’t mean I want to read garbage.”
