Though banned in China, Twitter has become a powerful platform for the world to access images and videos of protests taking place in the country.
What’s Happening on Twitter?
The Chinese government has taken subsequent steps to restrain domestic social media platforms from showing images and videos of demonstrations. Thousands of people in China are currently protesting against Covid-19 restrictions imposed in the country that are snatching away democratic freedom from the citizens.
How Can China Use Twitter?
Twitter, the micro-blogging platform presently owned by Elon Musk, has been blocked since 2009 in China. But Chinese citizens can still access it via VPNs which allows them to hide their original locations. They can share content via Twitter’s messaging system with the platform’s users who are widely followed, and those users, in turn, share them globally.
It’s Becoming Hazardous
Some protest-related search terms have been, amid all these, flooded with harmful and spam content from likely bot accounts, for which factors like high frequency of postings and a low number of followers are accountable. If a Twitter user searches for something on the platform by putting any of the nation’s agitated city’s names, he gets innumerable amounts of tweets containing sexual advertisements and other irrelevant content.
Some Twitter users’ profiles were banned because of posting protest-related content. The reason showed for suspension was the violation of Twitter’s terms and regulations. But other users came to their defence and made the Twitter officials restore the accounts.
What’s Musk Going to do?
It’s pretty interesting to see how Elon Musk tackles the issue. China, which is experiencing the most massive public protests in decades, is the country to manufacture the cars of Musk’s Tesla Inc. and also the biggest sales market for the same. On the other hand, Musk pledged to offer Twitter user freedom of speech on the platform. So, how he manages to maintain his vow to Twitter users without compromising Tesla’s profit margins is worth watching.
