When a Twitter account for Utah business coach Spencer Taggart began posting about hot-button political issues in 2020, it garnered widespread attention. Tweets about an endemic cultural divide in the US and support for Black Lives Matter were shared by two Chinese embassy officials.
But Taggart didn’t write the tweets and hasn’t been on the social media platform, now called X, in five years. Rather, his identity had been hijacked by a massive pro-China propaganda network, according to the social media analysis firm Graphika.
Taggart’s unusual saga is part of what Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Meta Platforms Inc. say is the largest China-based disinformation campaign ever. Designed to promote Chinese policies, criticize dissidents and mock westerners, it has infiltrated all corners of social media: Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, even fringe platforms like Gab, according to researchers.
An often ignored part of internet social etiquette is that people don’t deactivate their accounts when they stop using a platform.
If you haven’t logged into a social media account for the past half a year, you should consider deleting your own account. Preferably there should even be an automated system on that platform’s backend that would delete your account for you after a long enough period of inactivity from your part
