Pressures mounted over China over Hong Kong as Twitter said it has suspended more than 200,000 accounts that it believes were part of a Chinese government influence campaign targeting the protest movement in self-ruled region.
The company also said it will ban ads from state-backed media companies, expanding a prohibition it first applied in 2017 to two Russian entities.
The step is coping with a previously announced policy, by the company, to curb malicious political activity on a popular platform that has been criticized for enabling election interference around the world and for accepting money for ads that amount to propaganda by state-run media organizations.
"The accounts were suspended for violating the social networking platform's terms of service and because we think this is not how people can come to Twitter to get informed," a senior official told The Associated Press.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Chinese activity was reported to the FBI, which investigated Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election through social media.
On its part, Facebook said that it has also removed seven pages, three groups and five accounts, including some portraying protesters as cockroaches and terrorists.
Facebook, which is more widely used in Hong Kong, does not release data on such state-backed influence operations. Neither does it ban ads from state-owned media companies.
"We continue to look at our policies as they relate to state-owned media," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to the AP. "We're also taking a closer look at ads that have been raised to us to determine if they violate our policies."
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