China may have been trolling activists on Twitter for years, report finds

New evidence claims "hastily organised" campaigns against political opponents of the Chinese government have been running on social media for at least two years.

Watch Above: An activist interprets the Hong Kong Government's evolving counter-protest strategy

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analysed data released by Twitter last month, which showed a network of accounts deleted for being fake.

Twitter claims the deleted accounts were being run by the Chinese government to spread misinformation about the Hong Kong protest movement and other Chinese dissidents.

ASPI could not completely verify if the accounts were in fact state-sponsored, but found the timing of posts were during Chinese working hours, indicating that those behind the accounts were being paid.

"This does support Twitter's assertion that the accounts were being run by professionals," researcher Elise Thomas said.

"There were gaps in activity over the weekend and during Chinese New Year."

The activity of some accounts spiked dramatically as the recent Hong Kong protests escalated, with accounts spreading misinformation about the movement and those involved.

The accounts vilified Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters, and suggested the CIA and other western influences were funding the movement.

"Overall, these accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground," Twitter said in a statement in August.

"Based on our intensive investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation."

An example of content Twitter deleted from its platform. Source: Twitter

Ms Thomas said that the campaigns were not sophisticated and seemed to be hastily organised, particularly during the Hong Kong protests.

"These are not like the Russian campaigns during the US election, which are more methodical. This looks like hastily organised responses," she said.

The analysis found the accounts targeted Chinese dissidents. Ms Thomas said that the campaigns seemed to be targeted at Chinese nationals who had been using the platform while outside of China.

Ms Thomas said social media companies were in a difficult position addressing the issue of state-sponsored operations on their platforms.

"The data shows that in this case Twitter did delete authentic accounts, it's not easy," she said.

Though in the case of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire who became a political activist, who was targeted by fake accounts for two years, Ms Thomas said the platform could have acted more quickly.