Twitter suspends Thai royalist bill associated with an influence campaign
30 November, 2020
Twitter has suspended a good Thai pro-royalist account from the palace that a Reuters analysis found was linked to thousands of others created found in recent weeks spreading articles towards King Maha Vajiralongkorn and the monarchy.
The Reuters review found tens of thousands of tweets that an expert said were from accounts amplifying royalist messaging in a push to counter a months-long protest movement which has swelled from opposing the federal government to breaking a longstanding taboo by challenging the monarchy.
Internal army training documents reviewed by Reuters showed evidence of a coordinated information campaign designed to spread favourable information and discredit opponents.
The pro-monarchy @jitarsa_school account was suspended after Reuters sought touch upon Wednesday (Nov 25) from Twitter on the recent royalist campaign on the social media platform, where protesters have long had a solid presence.
Protesters and royalists have got cited the value of social media found in propelling the protest activity, which has end up being the biggest challenge in years to the monarchy as well as the government of former army leader Prayut Chan-o-cha.
Developed in September, the @jitarsa_school account had more than 48,000 followers before its suspension.
"The account involved was suspended for violating our guidelines on spam and platform manipulation," a Twitter representative said on Sunday. She said the suspension was based on the company's policies and not a result of the Reuters obtain comment.
The account's profile had said that it trained people for the Royal Volunteers programme, which is run by the Royal Office. A Facebook webpage for the Royal Volunteers School, which posts pro-monarchy clips and media of the programme, likewise identifies the Twitter bill as its own.
Neither the school nor the Royal Volunteers headquarters taken care of immediately requests for touch upon the suspension. The "Volunteer Spirit 904" programme was established through the current king's reign, which began in 2016, to build loyalty to the monarchy.
The palace didn't respond to a obtain comment. It has a policy of not talking with media and has not commented since the commence of protests in July that primarily targeted the federal government before breaking taboos by calling for curbs to the king's powers.
ROYALIST FIGHTBACK
In new weeks, royalist hashtags have begun trending on Twitter, a crucial platform for opponents of the federal government actually before protests commenced in July.
The Reuters analysis found that more than 80 % of the accounts following @jitarsa_school had also been created because the start of September. An example of 4,600 of the recently created accounts showed that they did was promote the royalist hashtags - an indication of the sort of activity that could not be associated with regular Twitter users.
A sample of 559 retweets of the account's tweets were nearly all from accounts with bot-like attributes, according to analyze by social mass media consultancy Drone Emprit for Reuters.
"Government forces have already been trying to counter the protesters," said Saijai Liangpunsakul of the independent Community Press Monitoring for Peace group. "Twitter has removed some accounts, but there are numerous more."
Hashtags promoted by the suspended consideration, usually alongside pics of the king and other royals, included those that translate seeing as: #StopViolatingTheMonarchy, #ProtectTheMonarchy, #WeLoveTheMotherOfTheLand, #WeLoveTheMonarchy and #MinionsLoveTheMonarchy.
Royalist group leader Warong Dechgitvigrom declined to comment on the account's suspension, saying he was unaware of it.
He told Reuters there have been more pro-monarchy text messages on Twitter because royalists increasingly recognised the need to counter protesters' communications and had encouraged each another to become listed on the platform.
"Pro-monarchy hashtags are authentic, born out of authentic feelings," he said.
PROTESTERS ACCUSED BY ROYALISTS
Royalists have accused protesters of inauthentic activity on Twitter, with coordinated campaigns around hashtags.
But Parit "Penguin" Chiwarak, among the protest leaders, said protesters using the platform were genuine and he welcomed the suspension of the pro-royalist account.
"They're not recruited to style hashtags like the army and they avoid taxpayers' cash," he said.
Although not directly from the @jitarsa_university account, a 28-page army file reviewed by Reuters showed an organised information procedure to focus on "opponents" and spread pro-monarchy text messages on Twitter.
The document says 17,562 Twitter accounts run by 9,743 army officers are split into a "White Team" and a "Grey/Dark Team" that were instructed to tweet with coordinated hashtags, as well concerning like, retweet and follow each other.
The document suggests measures to seem more like real accounts.
The army on Saturday acknowledged the file is real, saying in a Facebook post it had been used in an exercise session to fortify the army's pr efforts.
In early on October, Twitter announced it had removed 926 accounts from the Thai army for violating its platform-manipulation guidelines by amplifying pro-government content and targeting political opposition figures.
The army at that time denied that the accounts belonged to army officials.
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