Twitter Falsely Suspends UK Student After Mistaking Him As A Chinese “Disinformation Agent”

The gang over at Twitter Inc thinks a student in the UK is a Chinese state actor disinformation bot. Incredible stuff. People underestimate just how often things like this are happening. Big tech is an absolute mess. Billions of dollars, thousands of the “brightest” engineering minds in the world, hundreds of human content moderators, and random students are being suspended for no reason.

Thankfully this student got the attention of the BBC, who covered the story and reached out to Twitter about the incident. How many others were wrapped up in this “quick fix” Twitter pushed out the door to calm the PR nightmare they had on their hands by allowing the Communist Chinese to run ads disparaging the Hong Kong protestors?

Twitter announced on Monday it had removed 936 accounts it said belonged to a state-backed Chinese effort to sow discord and undermine protests in Hong Kong.The accounts taken down represented “the most active portions of this campaign”, the company said.That was news to Luka Ivezic, a 24-year-old student at Kings College London, whose account – @TechPoliticist – had been suspended, and appeared on the list of those said to be run by, and out of, China.Mr Ivezic, who was born in Croatia and says he has never been to China, recently completed his thesis.

The subject? “Disinformation, and how artificial intelligence can empower the tools that China and Russia have to misinform us.”“It is a bit ironic that something like this would happen to me,” he said after I contacted him about the list. According to documents released by Twitter on Monday, four of Mr Ivezic’s tweets were flagged, all of which discussed Artificial Intelligence, bitcoin and other related tech subjects. Tweets, which he says, he posted himself.

When contacted by the BBC, Twitter said it stood by its decision: “After further investigation with our team, we’ve confirmed [the account was] compromised and tied to the disinformation network noted in yesterday’s disclosure.”

Archived Source: Baffled student tells Twitter: ‘I’m not a Chinese agent’ – BBC News

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