Monday 28 November 2022 11:47 AM SEX BOTS are used to curb Chinese Covid protests trends now

A torrent of spam posts advertising escort services have flooded Twitter amid protests against China's Covid protocols, analysts have said, claiming the Chinese government is trying to cover up the scale of the demonstrations.

Searches performed on the social media network in Chinese for names of cities where anti-lockdown protests have erupted revealed untold numbers of erotic posts published by Chinese bot accounts.

Twitter was blocked in China by the ruling Communist Party (CCP) in 2009, but users in the country can still access the platform via a VPN or website proxy service and use it to find information not subject to Chinese censors.

Several major Chinese cities including Shanghai and the capital of Beijing have been rocked by protests in recent days, and researchers from Stanford University believe the porn-posting bot accounts are part of a government effort to scupper the spread of information on the social network.

Mengyu Dong, a Chinese-American researcher at Stanford University, posted numerous examples on his own Twitter page while other users called on the social network's CEO Elon Musk to tackle the problem.

Large numbers of Chinese-language Twitter accounts burst into life on Sunday and began inundating search feeds with racy images, suggestive videos and links to escort services.

Many of the accounts were created years ago and had been lying dormant, having posted little to no content. 

But since protests spread across the country this weekend, the accounts suddenly began churning out thousands of posts per day.  

The erotic images and videos included in the posts are accompanied by the names of cities to ensure that the distraction would turn up in searches for those seeking information on the demonstrations. 

Thousands of Chinese citizens rose up over the weekend to protest the government's ruthless zero-Covid policy after ten people died in an apartment fire in the city of Urumqi, where residents were enduring their third month of total lockdown.

The protests have since broadened to include general anti-government sentiment, with stunning reports having emerged of citizens calling for President Xi Jinping to resign.