对于职业网球、欧洲足球和英国小报的粉丝来说，这个神秘的

Twitter账号为他们提供了各种各样的东西。

Beginning last year, it retweeted news, most of it in English, about Roger Federer and the Premier League, and it shared juicy clickbait on Zsa Zsa, an English bulldog that won the 2018 World’s Ugliest Dog contest.

从去年开始，这个大部分用英文的账号转发过关于罗杰·费德勒

(Roger Federer)和英超联赛的新闻，还分享过有关一只名叫Zsa 

Zsa的英国斗牛犬使人感兴趣的点击诱饵，这只斗牛犬赢得了2018年

“世界最丑狗”大赛的冠军。

Then, suddenly, the account began posting, in Chinese, about a different obsession: politics in Hong Kong and mainland China.

然后，突然间，这个账号开始用中文发布另一种连篇累牍的东西：

香港和中国大陆的政治。

Tweets from @HKpoliticalnew

来自@HKpoliticalnew的推文

June 2018：Now Andy Murray’s out of Wimbledon, cheer on these young British hopefuls https://t.co/ct2kgTuEgU

2018年6月：现在安迪·穆雷(Andy Murray)已出局温布尔登，为这些

雄心勃勃的年轻英国人欢呼吧 https://t.co/ct2kgTuEgU

2019：Hong Kong independence is a dead end. But there are always people who are vying to go into the fire pit. Pathetic!

2019年：港独只会是死路，但偏偏有班人争住走入火坑，真可悲！

The United States is funding ‘Hong Kong independence’ and brainwashing deadbeat kids #spieseverywhere #colorrevolution #hongkong

美国资助“港独”废青洗脑#谍影重重#颜色革命#香港

By this summer, it had become a foot soldier in a covert campaign to shape people’s views about one of the world’s biggest political crises.

到今年夏天的时候，这个账号已成为一场秘密行动不可或缺的部分，

旨在塑造人们如何看待世界上最大的政治危机之一的看法。

The account, @HKpoliticalnew, and more than 200,000 other Twitter accounts were part of a sprawling Russian-style disinformation offensive from China, Twitter now says, the first time an American technology giant has attributed such a campaign to the Chinese government.

Twitter现在说，@HKpoliticalnew以及其他20多万个Twitter账号，

是来自中国的俄罗斯式大规模虚假信息攻击战的一部分。这是美国的

科技巨头首次将此类攻击归咎于中国政府。

China has long deployed propaganda and censorship to subject its citizens to government-approved narratives. As the nation’s place in the world grows, Beijing has increasingly turned to internet platforms that it blocks within the country — including Twitter and Facebook — to advance its agenda across the rest of the planet.

长期以来，中国一直使用宣传和审查措施使民众只接受政府批准的

叙事。随着中国在世界上的地位不断提高，北京已越来越多地求助于

Twitter和Facebook等在国内被屏蔽的互联网平台，推动它在全球

其他地区的议程。

It has done so in part by setting up accounts on the platforms for its state-run news outlets, such as China Daily, to make a public case for its views. But that is quite different from using fake accounts to manipulate opinions surreptitiously or simply to sow confusion.

中国的部分做法是通过在这些平台上给国有新闻媒体、比如《中国

日报》建账号，来公开阐明自己的观点。但这与使用虚假账号暗中

操纵观点，或仅仅是制造混乱有很大的不同。

“The end goal is to control the conversation,” said Matt Schrader, a China analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund in Washington.

“最终目标是控制对话，”德国马歇尔基金会(German Marshall Fund)中国问题分析师马特·施拉德(Matt Schrader)说。

Twitter last month took down nearly 1,000 accounts that it said were part of a state-directed effort to undermine the antigovernment protests in Hong Kong. It also suspended 200,000 other accounts that it said were connected to the Chinese operation but not yet very active. Facebook and YouTube quickly followed suit. All three platforms are blocked in mainland China but not in Hong Kong.

Twitter上月删除了近1000个账号，称它们是政府主导的努力的一部分，

旨在破坏香港的反政府抗议活动。Twitter还暂停了另外20万个账号，

称这些账号与中国的信息战有关，但目前还不是很活跃。Facebook和

YouTube很快也紧随其后。这三个平台在中国大陆都被屏蔽，但在香港

则没有屏蔽。

The 3.6 million tweets that the accounts sent represented a campaign that was less sophisticated and more hastily assembled than the one Russia carried out during the 2016 United States presidential election, researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said in a report published this month.

澳大利亚战略政策研究所(Australian Strategic Policy Institute)

的研究人员在本月发表的一份报告中说，这些账号已发了360万条推文，

其所代表的运动与俄罗斯在2016年美国总统大选期间发起的信息战相比

不太老练，也更仓促。

Instead of taking the time to cultivate plausible yet fake online personalities, the campaign’s operators appear to have simply bought accounts in the shadowy global marketplace for social media influence, where followers and retweets can be had for cheap.

这场运动的操作者没有花时间去培养看似可信但虚假的网络人物，而

似乎是简单地在一个神秘的全球市场上购买账号，寻求获取社交媒体

影响力。在那个市场上，粉丝和转发都可以低价买到。

The accounts posted in Indonesian, Arabic, Portuguese and other languages. They promoted hookup services, posted about Korean boy bands and retweeted messages about pop-punk music.

这些账号用印尼语、阿拉伯语、葡萄牙语和其他语言发贴。它们推销

勾搭服务，发有关韩国男孩乐队的帖子，转发关于流行朋克音乐的信息。

THE NEW YORK TIMES

“As a Hong Kong person who loves Hong Kong, I really miss the Hong Kong of before, which was developed and ruled by law,” @derrickmcnabbx wrote in Chinese on June 15. The account’s location was described as “Georgia, USA.” Before this year, nearly all of its tweets were links to pornography.

“作为一名热爱香港的香港人，我真是好怀念以前那个发达的法治

香港，”@derrickmcnabbx在6月15日用中文写道。该账号的地址据称

是“美国乔治亚州”。今年之前，该账号几乎所有推文都是色情链接。

The “blunt-force” approach, the authors of the Australian report wrote, suggested that the operation was likely to have been a “rapid response to the unanticipated size and power of the Hong Kong protests rather than a campaign planned well in advance.”

上述澳大利亚报告的作者写道，这种“钝力”做法表明，此次行动可能

是“对香港抗议活动的规模和力量做出的快速反应，而不是事先计划好

的行动”。

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said he had no knowledge of the matter when asked last month whether the government was behind the accounts that Twitter and Facebook took down.

中国外交部的一名发言人上月被问及政府是否是被Twitter和Facebook

撤下账号的幕后黑手时，他表示对此事一无所知。

In its announcement, Twitter said little about how it determined that the accounts it removed were state directed. The company said it routinely monitored for such campaigns but declined to comment further.

Twitter在声明中几乎未说它是如何确定被删除账号是受国家主导的。

该公司表示它定期对这类活动进行检查，但拒绝发表进一步的评论。

The Chinese government blocks Twitter’s service in mainland China, and yet some of the accounts were operated from unblocked Chinese internet addresses, the company said. Some of the activity was traced to addresses in Beijing, according to a person familiar with Twitter’s investigation who feared retaliation from the government and requested anonymity.

中国政府屏蔽了Twitter在中国大陆的服务，但Twitter称，被删账号

中有些是由未被屏蔽的中国互联网地址操作的。据一位了解Twitter

调查情况的人士称，这些活动的一部分被追溯到北京的地址。这名人士

因担心遭到政府报复，要求不具名。

There are already some signs that Twitter has not halted the Chinese campaign entirely. Nick Monaco of Institute for the Future, a think tank in Palo Alto, Calif., identified 17 accounts that had strong similarities to those that Twitter took down but which remained active.

已经有一些迹象表明，Twitter并没有完全停止中国的行动。加州帕洛

阿尔托智库未来研究所(Institute for the Future)的尼克·莫纳科

(Nick Monaco)发现了与Twitter关闭的账号非常相似的17个账号，

它们仍然活跃。

Some of the accounts tweeted messages that matched, word for word, ones that Twitter had deleted. They used the same third-party software as many of the accounts Twitter had removed to post messages with similar themes, in what seemed to be a coordinated manner.

有些账号发布的信息与Twitter删除账号上的信息一字不差。而且也

使用了相同的第三方软件，以一种似乎协调一致的方式发布类似主题

的信息。

After The New York Times presented Mr. Monaco’s findings to Twitter last week, the company shut the accounts down but declined to say conclusively whether they had been part of the same state-backed network.

《纽约时报》上周将莫纳科的调查结果提交给Twitter后，该公司关闭

了这些账号，但拒绝明确说明它们是否属于同一个政府支持的网络。

Many of the accounts originally identified by Twitter had spread pro-government messages during other public-relations crises for Beijing. Large numbers of such messages began appearing in 2017, after the exiled businessman Guo Wengui began accusing senior Chinese leaders of graft, which raises the question of why Twitter did not remove the accounts sooner.

Twitter最初确认的账号中，许多曾在北京面临其他公关危机期间传播

支持政府的信息。大量此类信息在2017年开始出现，也就是在流亡国外

的商人郭文贵开始指控中国高层领导人腐败之后，这引发了一个问题：

为什么Twitter没有早点删除这些账号？

The closed accounts also targeted Chinese dissidents

被关闭的账号也针对中国异见人士

Before the accounts focused on the Hong Kong protests, they smeared critics of the Chinese government, according to analyses by The Times and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

据时报和澳大利亚战略政策研究所的分析，在这些账号把注意力转向

香港抗议之前，它们曾抹黑中国政府的批评者。

Tweets about the Hong Kong protests and the extradition bill exploded after June 9, the day of the first big demonstration.

有关香港抗议活动和修订《逃犯条例》的推文从6月9日起大量出现，

那天发生了第一次大规模示威活动。

The favorite target was Guo Wengui, a businessman who accused top Chinese officials of corruption. The accounts attacked him continuously for more than two years.

这些账号最喜欢攻击的目标是商人郭文贵，他指控中国高层官员腐败。

这些账号在两年多的时间里不断地攻击他。

Yang Jianli, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was accused of being a fraud.

这些账号还指控杨建利欺诈，后者直言不讳地批评中国政府。

Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller who disappeared then resurfaced in police custody in China, was also targeted.

失踪后在中国警方的羁押下重新露面的香港书商桂敏海也是攻击目标。

@ksiushalapina73: Gui Minhai was taken off a train by Chinese police on Jan. 20, various foreign media outlets made a big fuss about it. Chinese law does not tolerate such criticism from the foreign media

@ksiushalapina73：桂敏海1月20号在火车上被中国警方带走，境外

各媒体组织借此大释炒作，中国法律岂容外媒指手画脚

@valentinax5w1sw: Guo Wengui, as a wanted criminal, you have evaded taxes in China, forcibly taken your female employees as mistresses, used recordings to threaten business partners, wooed and corrupted government officials.

@valentinax5w1sw：郭文贵，作为一名通辑犯，你在大陆偷税漏税、

强霸女员工、录音要胁合作伙伴、拉拢腐蚀政府官员。

@Sawyer19Carole: So Yang Jianli spreads rumors everywhere, disguising himself as a victim, when in fact he is the one who wants to persecute others.

@Sawyer19Carole：原来杨建利四处散布谣言把自己伪装成被迫害，

其实是他自己想迫害别人。

During some of their tweet campaigns, the accounts posted primarily during the workweek, a sign that the accounts were run by employees working on the clock. For months, one account posted messages smearing Mr. Guo at 12 and 42 minutes past the hour, suggesting that the activity was automated.

在这些账号的某些推文运动期间，它们主要是在工作日发帖子，表明

这些账号由打卡上班的人员操作。一个账号有好几个月都在整点过后

的12分种和42分钟发诋毁郭文贵的信息，表明发帖是自动进行的。

Some of the accounts appear to have been started by genuine users but were later hijacked.

有些账号似乎是由真正的用户创建的，但后来被劫持了。

The first four years of posts on one account, @emiliya_naum, read like those of an ordinary American teenager.

@emiliya_naum这个帐户前四年的帖子，看起来跟一个普通的美国青少年

没什么两样。

She tweeted longingly at @justinbieber and said she twerked in her room to celebrate Barack Obama’s 2012 election victory. She cataloged her moods and mused about her crushes.

她发推表达对贾斯汀·比伯(@justinbieber)的迷恋，还说她在房间里

跳电臀舞庆祝奥巴马在2012年的大选中获胜。她记录下自己的喜怒哀乐，

以及对爱慕对象的一些小心思。

“The guy I like and my best friend hate each other … #ThisIsntGood,” she wrote in 2012.

“我喜欢的那个人和我最好的朋友互相看不顺眼……#这可不好，”

她在2012年写道。

Then, like many Twitter users, she let her account fall silent — until this summer, when she re-emerged as a cheerleader for Hong Kong law enforcement.

然后，像许多Twitter用户一样，她的账户停更了——直到今年夏天，

她再次露面，成为了为香港执法部门打气的拉拉队队员。

“Hong Kong police, way to go, we support you!” she tweeted, in Chinese. “We understand your hardships!”

“香港警察，好样的，我们挺你！”她用中文发推，“你们的苦，我们

都懂！”

It could not be determined whether @emiliya_naum was originally operated by a real person. No accounts with that name were found on Facebook, Instagram or other major social platforms.

无法确定这个账号最初是否由真人操作。在Facebook、Instagram或

其他主要社交平台上都没有发现同名的账户。

By and large, the accounts that Twitter took down struggled to go viral with their pro-Beijing messages. Many of their most retweeted posts were links to pornography and animal videos.

总的来说，Twitter删除的账号中，那些支持北京立场的内容很难引起

太大关注。它们转发量最大的帖子都是色情和动物视频的链接。

Elise Thomas, one of the authors of the Australian report, said that the low level of professionalism suggested that the campaign was not the work of the People’s Liberation Army or the Ministry of State Security, which have previously been linked to Chinese cyberespionage and information campaigns.

澳大利亚那份报告的作者之一埃莉斯·托马斯(Elise Thomas)表示，

专业度欠佳表明此次行动不是中国人民解放军或国家安全部在背后操作。

此前，这两个部门曾与中国的网络间谍活动和情报活动联系在一起。

“I would be surprised if the P.L.A. was responsible because I would expect they would be more competent than this,” Ms. Thomas said.

“如果是中国人民解放军负责的，我会感到意外，因为在我眼里它的

能力不应该只是这一点，”托马斯说。

Russia’s social media efforts ahead of the 2016 presidential election were cannier about finding and influencing audiences in the United States. The Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg company with Kremlin ties, tailored its trolling operations to sow maximum discord.

2016年总统大选之前，俄罗斯在社交媒体上找到并影响美国受众方面

更胜一筹。与克里姆林宫有关联的圣彼得堡公司“互联网研究机构”

(Internet Research Agency)策动了相关扰乱行动，以将分化美国

民众的效果最大化。

Titus C. Chen, a professor who studies Chinese social media at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan, said he believed that China had created its own analogues to the Internet Research Agency, though they operated far less openly.

台湾国立中山大学从事中国社交媒体研究的教授陈至洁表示，他相信

中国已经成立了与俄罗斯“互联网研究机构”类似的机构，但运作比较

低调而已。

Turning spam bots into propaganda mouthpieces would represent a natural evolution of techniques that Beijing has long used at home.

将垃圾邮件机器人变成宣传喉舌，代表着北京一直在国内使用的技术

的自然演变。

For years, China has used armies of pseudonymous keyboard warriors to flood domestic social platforms and news sites with pro-government comments.

多年来，中国一直在使用匿名的键盘侠大军，用支持政府的言论占领

国内社交平台和新闻网站。

In 2013, the head of China’s propaganda department said that in Beijing alone, there were more than 2 million people working to “strengthen guidance of online opinion,” including by posting comments on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform.

2013年，中宣部部长表示，仅在北京，就有200多万人在从事“加强

网上舆论引导”工作，包括在中国类似Twitter的社交媒体平台微博上

发表评论。

Samm Sacks, a China expert at New America, a Washington-based think tank, said the clumsiness of the Twitter operations showed that China was still “out of its depth in trying to shape the international narrative.”

总部设在华盛顿的智库新美国(New America)的中国问题专家姗姆·

萨克斯(Samm Sacks)表示，中国在Twitter上行动笨拙表明，它“在

塑造国际叙事方面力有未逮”。

“What works inside China doesn’t work internationally,” she said. “I think China is probably working through that now.”

“在中国国内行得通的东西在国际上就未必，”她说。“我认为中国

现在可能正在克服这个问题。”