Welcome to the Tech Meam Ride Home for Friday, June 12th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today.

Twitter takes down a bunch of accounts it says are government propaganda. UK regulators are going to take

a hard look at Facebook's Giffy acquisition. I explain in depth why Chris Cox returning

to Facebook is such a big deal, the PlayStation 5 reveal, and of course the

weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

Twitter has removed more than 32,000 accounts that it says engaged in propaganda link to Russia, China, and Turkey, describing the accounts as state-linked information operations.

To be specific, 23,750 accounts linked to China were taken down, 1,152 Russian linked accounts were taken down, and 7,340 accounts targeting domestic audiences in Turkey were taken down.

But then this morning, Twitter also said that it had shut down an additional 180,000 accounts all of them

quoting from CNN here tied to the Chinese government experts working with Twitter who reviewed the accounts said they pushed deceptive

narratives around the Hong Kong protests, COVID-19, and other topics.

The company said the accounts were, quote, spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist

Party of China, end quote, and were removed for violating its platform manipulation policies.

Twitter is officially blocked in China, though many people in the country are able to access

it using a v p p n.

Among the targets of the Chinese campaign were overseas Chinese, quote, in an effort to exploit

their capacity to extend the party's influence. quote,

in an effort to exploit their capacity to extend the party state's influence,

end quote, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute,

a group that Twitter worked with to analyze the accounts.

Twitter said the accounts tweeted,

quote, predominantly in Chinese languages, end quote.

The UK's competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, the country's antitrust

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