Twitter has been known for its pro-China bias, and it routinely tinkers with handles that go against its ideological bias. It routinely tries to underplay US President Donald Trump’s handle for example. In 2017 a Twitter employee even took it down for 11 minutes.
My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Recently Twitter has tried to fact-check Trump, apart from taking down Trump’s campaign tribute video to George Floyd citing a copyright complaint. It has also placed warning on one of Trump’s tweet, claiming it glorified violence. But why is Twitter doing this? A sensational revelation might help us connect the dots. Li Fei-Fei, a Chinese American and controversial CCP supporter is now on the company’s board.
Li Fei-Fei, an AI expert and former Google Vice-President was hired by the microblogging website as a “new independent director” with immediate effect from May 11. It isn’t a matter of surprise that Twitter has started tinkering with Trump’s handle ever since especially in view of the ongoing tussle between the United States and China.
On May 20, a petition was created on the White House website protesting against Twitter’s unfair behaviour targeting anti-CCP handles. The petition titled “Call for a thorough investigation on Twitter’s violation of freedom of speech” claims that Twitter is suppressing the criticism of the Communist Party of China (CCP) and suspending the handles of Chinese dissidents while those leaning towards Beijing remain unscathed.
The petition also claims that on May 18, many “anti-CCP” Twitter handles were permanently disabled by the microblogging platform.
The petition also underlines the former Google Vice President’s allegedly “close ties with top leaders of the CCP,” and urged the US government to probe “Twitter’s violation of freedom of speech, and on Dr. FeiFei Li’s collaborations with the CCP, a threat to national security.”
The allegations made here are not without substance, and in fact when Li Fei-Fei had taken the helm of affairs at Google’s new AI centre in Beijing, she was quoted by the Chinese State media as saying “stay true to our founding mission”- a well-known CCP slogan and that “China has awakened.” According to Radio Asia, she is also alleged to have ties with a student association affiliated to the Communist Party of China’s United Front.
Her stint at Google was quite controversial to say the least, as she left the leading tech giant following a controversy surrounding Google’s Project Maven initiative that helped the Pentagon identify drone targets from a blurry video footage. This prompted an employee revolt at Google, and some 4,000 students signed a petition against the Project. A trail of leaked e-mails had revealed that Li was more concerned about the PR damage to Google than the ethical issues involved.
Meanwhile, Amul, the dairy giant of India which is well known for its topicals and creatives on trending issues, both national as well as international, was recently made to face the brunt of Twitter’s explicit bias against anyone remotely nationalistic or anti-China.
Amul had decided to make a topical on China’s incursions into sovereign Indian territory, however Twitter blocked Amul’s handle. It was restored after Indians vented their outrage over Amul’s handle being blocked by Twitter, for a country like China, which has itself banned the microblogging site.
Interestingly, France-based commentator Wang Longmeng says Twitter seems to have ignored Li Fei-Fei’s background history. He added, “Li Fei-fei … secretly opposed Google’s cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense from a high moral standpoint … but turned a blind eye to Project Dragonfly, in which Google was planning to help the Chinese Communist Party vet online speech.”
This is not it. Li is also an advisor on AI technology to China’s Tsinghua University. Tsinghua University’s AI research shares deep ties with the Chinese military. In fact, one of its two main purposes are to further the Dragon’s military needs as a part of the “military-civilian integration policy.” Use of AI in military technology is at the top of Xi Jinping’s agenda and he plans to make China a world leader in the sector by 2030.
Twitter uses AI technique- deep learning for recommending tweets to its users, and also uses AI technology to identify racist and hate-filled content on its platform, apart from identifying content from extremist groups. And now Twitter has hired a pro-CCP AI expert, and thus we are not surprised about Twitter trying to censor Donald Trump on Twitter.
A CCP supporter could be literally handling Twitter’s use of AI technology for recommending tweets, and also identifying objectionable content. Don’t be surprised if Twitter starts following the CCP’s parochial and dogmatic approach in order to make the microblogging platform another hotbed of Beijing-led propaganda.