Chinese police searching people’s phones for Twitter, Instagram amid Covid protests, reports say | Tech Reddy

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Chinese police say they are looking for foreign applications such as Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram in people’s phones during the nationwide protests against the “zero-Covid” prevention policy. the island.

Unable to post dissent on the Chinese internet due to heavy restrictions, users are turning to platforms such as Twitter to share reports of local civil unrest, and many of those videos are streaming out of the country, he said The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

But authorities in Beijing, as well as other cities such as Shanghai and Hangzhou, are preventing people from traveling and recording their personal information if they find applications such as Twitter or Telegram online. their phones, many reports say.

“If they are interested, the police say they can report people,” said William Yang, East Asia correspondent at German broadcaster DW News, adding that the check everywhere, including streets and entrances to shopping malls.

The public’s frustration is said to be not only about the Covid lockdowns, but also an open challenge to the Xi Jinping government.

The trend of public violence in the country has been a rare sight since the 1989 student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Although China’s massive internet censorship has been dubbed the “Great Wall” due to its breadth and blocking of applications such as Twitter and Instagram, people are accessing them through virtual private networks (VPN ) to spread information about the protests to the outside world, according to the report The Washington Post and TechCruch.

The Chinese government has taken several steps to prevent the spread of information about the protests, including a week-long spam attack on Twitter to hide information about the protests in the cities including Shanghai and Beijing, which the researchers identified on a micro-scale platform.

“Chinese bots are flooding Twitter with *helper posts*, which may make it more difficult for Chinese users to access information about mass protests,” said Mengyu Dong, a technology expert and prevent.

Some accounts on Twitter that have been dormant for years will start posting spam on the site.

“Unfortunately, if a Chinese person decides to come to Twitter to find out what happened in China last night, these nsfw posts shared by bots will be the first thing that appears in their search results. ,” said Ms Dong.

The social media platform also struggled to keep up with the deluge of spam comments as the company’s home-grown company was eliminated by more than half.

“All Chinese influencers and analysts at Twitter have all resigned,” a former Twitter employee said. Hang up.

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