推特平台到底有几副面孔？一方面对力挺香港警察的言论和账号，统统“删无赦”；另一方面又默许“僵尸机器人”账号大量散布反华的不实言论。一向自诩“技术中立”的推特平台，真的是中立的吗？

2018年9月，牛津大学互联网协会的两位学者Gillian Bolsover和Philip Howard，在《信息、传播及社会》（Information，Communication and Society）期刊上发表论文，分析中国是否在用受脚本控制的账号（即bot账号，意为通过脚本程序定时定点自动推送信息的账号）在微博和推特上进行宣传。

However, contrary to expectations and previous news reports, no evidence was found of pro-Chinese-state automation on Twitter. Automation on Twitter was associated with anti-Chinese-state perspectives and published in simplified Mandarin, presumably aimed at diasporic Chinese and mainland users…

因此，两位学者认为，微博账号上并没有使用发帖机器人作为宣传手段。相反，推特却被“僵尸机器人”占据，日夜滚动推送“套路化”的反华信息，令人窒息。在这种人为构建的“反华网络空间”中，受众无法自由选择信息。

数据分析结果显示，推特上前100个最常发送与中国时政相关话题的账号中，有71个账号的全部推文都来自第三方平台。其中35个来自一个日本的bot平台twittbot。另外，这些账号中许多都使用惯用的脚本发帖。

Seventy-one of the top-100 highest posting accounts postedall or almost all of their posts using known automation platforms: 35 used the Japanese platform twittbot.net, nine IFTTT (If This Then That) and four dlvr.it. 

Additionally, many of these accounts appeared to be using custom automation scripts.

研究报告具体阐述了机器人发帖的特征：发帖更频繁、24小时滚动发帖、发帖话题单一、转发比例极高……

These users come to Twitter seeking more diverse information and an online public sphere but instead they find an information environment in which a small number of anti-Chinese-state voices are attempting to use automation to dominate discourse. 

反观微博账号，在超过81万个微博账号的153万条评论中，只有145个账号发过超过100个时政相关的帖文。

Out of the 815,776 unique users in this dataset of 1,543,165 comments, only 145 users posted 100 or more comments across the examined posts. 

根据其发帖规律、内容、来源，这些高频发帖用户并没有使用机器人的情况，而且也没有证据证明发帖的是虚假账号。

Based on an examination of their posting patterns, post content and post sources, these high-posting users did not appear to be using automation and there did not seem to be evidence that these were fake accounts.

为什么微博基本没有使用“机器人僵尸账号”发送虚假信息呢？

论文作者给出了一个解释：机器人发帖这种廉价又肮脏（a cheap and dirty solution）的宣传方式，是小团体或个人为达到特殊目的而使用的。

对中国这样拥有人力物力的泱泱大国而言，在微博账号上推送有创意的、个性化的信息，才是更明智、更有效率的传播方式。

文章选取微博上官方时政帖文下方的150万条评论，以及110万条使用与中国和中国时政相关标签的推特帖文。

Findings are based on an analysis of 1.5 million comments on official political information posts on Weibo and 1.1 million posts using hashtags associated with China and Chinese politics on Twitter. 

These accounts were selected to cover the largest state providers of news information on the platform…

同时，研究还选取了来自推特平台的数据。两位学者统计了2017年1月24日到2月5日期间最常使用的27个与中国相关的标签。并根据这些标签，选取了2017年2月21日到4月8日期间使用其中任何一个标签发布的帖文。

这些标签包括：

All of the tweets made between 24 January and 5 February 2017 using one of these hashtags was collected. These tweets and their concurrent hashtags were analysed to ascertain hashtags commonly used to post about Chinese politics. A final list of 27 of the most common hashtags associated with Chinese social, political and cultural issues was established. 

乱封账号，推特被“bug”腐蚀了？

当地时间8月19日，推特狂封936个所谓有“官方背景”的账号。推特（Twitter）在声明中称，这些账号故意在香港散布政治纷争，破坏当地抗议运动的“合法性和政治立场”。

这一波操作，让一些普通的吃瓜群众“懵”了：我只想静静玩推特，咋就被莫名封了号？

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. 

BBC：困惑的学生对推特说：我不是中国特工

"It is a bit ironic that something like this would happen to me," he said after I contacted him about the list.

Luka，图源：BBC

Luka的父亲Marin对BBC说，Luka正在接受网络和隐私等方面的调查，他担心这会影响儿子的职业生涯。 

“任何一个雇主都会对他进行详细的背景调查，即使我们有合理的解释，雇主也可能因为Luka发布有问题的推文而拒绝雇佣。”

"Any of his target employers would have extensive background checks and this would come out. Even with a solid explanation, some might decide that the risk of there being some truth in Twitter's reporting is not worth the trouble."

事实上，根据推特负责人收到的推文列表，该账户从未在推特上发布或转发任何与香港暴乱相关的内容。

According to the list tweets picked up by Twitter's moderators, the account was never used to tweet - or, it appears, retweet - anything remotely connected to the unrest in Hong Kong.

"From going through the datasets Twitter has released,” she told me in an email, "it doesn’t seem like [Twitter] were particularly precise.

"…some of it seems to have little or no connection to the protests."

推特平台到底有几副面孔？一方面对力挺香港警察的言论和账号，统统“删无赦”；一方面又默许“僵尸机器人”账号大量散布反华的不实言论；同时，误删与香港问题毫无关系的账号。