cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/48665498

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A Chinese pro-democracy activist imprisoned in the early 1990s for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement,” after which he fled to the United States, claims that X, the Elon Musk-owned social network, unilaterally shuttered his account based on disinformation circulated by Beijing.

Former student leader Wilson Lei Chen, also known as Chen Pokong, says higher-ups at X took the Chinese Communist Party’s false accusations at face value, subsequently cutting him off from his 150,000 followers with “zero explanation,” according to a $2 million-plus lawsuit.

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The 62-year-old Chen, a longtime critic of the CCP who helped the 1989 Tiananmen Square protestors spread their message to the south of the country, says in his complaint that his X account – which he established in 2010 – was suddenly taken offline nearly three years ago and never reinstated. Chen, who now lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has “submitted several appeals,” which were “all denied immediately through identical automated responses,” his complaint states.

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It says Chen, who is acting as his own lawyer, “is informed and believes that his wrongful suspension may have been influenced by: coordinated inauthentic reporting, foreign disinformation campaigns, [and] political pressure to silence dissenting voices,” all allegedly propagated by the CCP and its proxies.

Chen was targeted for harassment online by the CCP and Chinese government security agents in what the Department of State called a multi-billion-dollar influence operation meant to shut down dissent and criticism of Beijing, according to a 2023 CNN investigation.

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The years-long effort, known by various names including “Spamouflage,” “Dragonbridge,” has sought to undermine dissidents abroad, damage American companies considered hostile to China and subvert internet commentary that might be disparaging of the CCP.

X Corp. CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has deep ties to China and the CCP, raising concerns among American officials that his relationship with Beijing could constitute a threat to national security.

While X is blocked in China, it emerged last fall that Musk’s SpaceX, one of the largest and most important U.S. military contractors, has taken direct investment from Chinese nationals, according to ProPublica. And some 10 months after the U.S., the U.K. and Canada issued a joint statement in March 2021 expressing grave concern over “forced labour, mass detention in internment camps, forced sterilizations, and the concerted destruction of Uyghur heritage” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China, Musk – seemingly unfazed – opened a Tesla showroom there.

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