As Bluesky takes flight, China has got a Twitter problem
For years, state media have been seeking to grab the microphone. Now Musk has handed them it.. no one is listening?
This week, a series of migrations has added buzz to BlueSky. On Tuesday, the app passed 20 million mark — adding a million accounts in a day — and overtook Threads worldwide for the number of active daily users.
For Chinese state media, the rise couldn’t have come at a worse time. They have sunk considerable resources into Twitter, via unlabeled state-sponsored influencers, huge bot networks, the famous 50 cent army, offline police harassment of users, and cultivating the platform’s owner Elon Musk.
The Twitter bird, they thought, had finally been caged.
However, with BlueSky looking likely to emerge past Threads, Mastodon, and Substack notes as the X-scape of choice, already, there is worried chatter within Chinese state media circles as to how to address the problem.
Stick or twist..?
How state media discovered Twitter
In some ways, you have to feel sorry for the CPC. For years, they didn’t understand social media.
Untested commercially, and attuned to disseminating information to a largely captured audience, state media outlets floundered when they hit the wilds of the world wide web.
To help, bosses tried tipping the scales. Crude techniques like massive ad buys via promoted posts, bot networks, and PR companies were used by state media editors to bolster their views.
However, Twitter’s changing of the rules in 2019, banning state media from buying ads, and throttling their accounts via a tweaked algorithm hurt. Labelling them as state media, hurt further.
Overnight, viewership plummeted. In the year to 2020, China Daily added a million Twitter followers: since then, it’s lost 200,000. Obscene scenarios saw outlets like CGTN, who professed to have 13 million followers, garner just a handful of likes per post.
So. Why did they struggle so much?
The first is resources.
While each major state media outlet had a social media department or digital team, organisationally, these departments sat the very bottom of the hierarchal scale. The majority of senior management had all come up through the 1970’s to 1980s, where the newspaper, or TV was king. They simply didn’t understand new media.
These prejudices meant salaries were as much as 30-50% lower for digital departments. Geography too. China Daily’s website staff were in a different building across the street — CCTV’s the other side of town.
For a time, heading social media was akin to punishment. Literally in some cases. When one Xinhua TV head was accused of impropriety with college students, in a grubby massages-for-internships scandal, he was punished with a promotion… to lead the Xinhua app.
Far from realising their accounts were windows to millions, work was delegated to junior staff — mainly interns and fresh graduates — who essentially, never clocked off. Inexperienced professionals, with low morale, churning posts, under strict censorship… the cocktail was never going to work.
The second problem was content.
Obviously, selling communist messages to a skeptical world was always going to be a struggle. But state media also failed due to inherent flaws within the system.
It can’t be understated how much some believe in the CPC. Not all — the majority of Chinese I found work in media for the love of media, not some ideological mission — but for a minority, particularly management and the content creators, they are apostles of CPC dogma.
Management can only climb the ranks having proved fealty to the Party. This meant bosses tended to be more in thrall to Party teachings than most, and were often blinded by dogma — to the point of naivety.
A viewpoint I heard more than once is: “Of course rational people will watch and believe us. We are right.”
As such, there was a genuine confusion as to why content didn’t click with overseas audiences. Some looked at swollen numbers a video would have domestically, and the bereft figures the exact same video would have internationally, and couldn’t fathom the disconnect.
On Twitter, this problem tended to be either a) ignored, or b) hidden via giant bot buys just before report writing season.
‘Getting it‘
It’s only recently, that state media has begun to understand social media.
In this, I had a very small part to play. In 2019, I launched China Daily’s first short political commentary social media videos. After a few weeks, I had two genuinely viral hits. In six months, I racked up 20 million views. We won awards. They built a new studio. Other outlets came to research us.
It didn’t pass me by that soon, state media-produced three minute political commentary videos, with a light-hearted bent, began popping up everywhere.
When I first started in China, little to no thought was given to understanding foreign audiences: message first. By the time I left, it had started to click that foreigners needed a different approach.
To give credit where it’s due, state media’s “studio” system has been especially effective at this, including prominent figures like Li Jingjing and It’s Abby for CMG, and Andy Boreham at Shanghai Daily.
Each are fronted by a personality, that is then backed up by a small team of anonymous writers, editors, censors, and media budgets at their respected state media outlet.
Initially, they — and dozens more — were used as subversive ways to spread content without the burden of admitting they were CPC creations. To sneak into timelines. When social media’s restrictions on state media hit, they equally became effective workarounds, or ways to buy adspace surreptitiously.
While some have been forced to admit their origin — Andy and his state media merchandise springs to mind — others scrub any mention of their state media links, and maintain complete kayfabe. Even Andy maintains he has editorial control over his output (a lie).
It’s not all effective, however. Most accounts simply never took off.
And the larger ones, having leant so heavily into nationalistic standpoints, appear to have hit a wall. Followers/views have slowed. Today, their content repels as much as it attracts new overseas audiences.
As the exodus from Twitter continues, their scope will surely only diminish.
Will Twitter’s downfall hurt?
Now. Reality check. Even at its height, before Musk’s changes, Twitter is a lot less popular than you imagine.
In 2023, the average Brit spent 13.5x more time on TikTok than they did on Twitter, and 4.5x more time on Facebook. Now consider the UK is one of Twitter’s most enthusiastic bases.
Frustrated by limited returns, many state media outlets have actually already started to turn away from Twitter.
In its most recent Social Responsibility Report, China Daily promises to: “strengthen proactive publicity and actively tell the story of the Communist Party of China to the outside world.” CGTN, Xinhua et al all make similar statements in theirs.
Yet, in practice, there’s been a noticeable shift of attention by state media back to their domestic platforms.
When I was there, China Daily prided itself on being the first English-language newspaper in China. Today, the majority of the organisation’s social media video output is in Mandarin, designed exclusively for its domestic channels. Most never leave the Great Firewall.
Take Media Unlocked. Launched circa 2020 as an investigative series to counter western narratives, China Daily bills it as one of its flagship brands, and (optimistically) states it has been watched tens of millions of times.
In reality, its external impact has been negligible. Aside from spikes from spats with the Philippine press, CBS’s 60 Minutes show, and a CNN story highlighting how its hosts are often AI generated, the series has barely registered overseas. Around half its posts on Twitter top out at just a few hundred views.
What has worked is its domestic arm. Shorn of the male host, Xu Pan Yiru’s pithy summaries regularly go viral, and ‘Tell News in Vernacular’ is one of China Daily’s most watched channels. One video, where she describes her political/personal motivations for doing her job during a speech contest (tl;dr quote: “I love my country”) hit 60,000+ likes on their Wechat channel, and broke out to other platforms to become a genuine widespread viral hit in China. Into this, China Daily has leant.
Today, domestic platforms Billibilli, Douyin and Wechat are the main focuses.
China Daily still produce an hour or two of English video content a month, but this, like their two foreign hosts have largely fallen by the wayside, with Potside Chats, or Unboxing China failing to make any cut through domestically or abroad. One recent livestream I clicked into had 2 viewers.
Across the entire industry, this trend is being replicated. Full-time foreign hosts are being dumped, replaced by cheap day-hires of foreigners already in China (mostly students from “friendly” Belt & Road countries). While international content departments, who ostensibly should be concentrating wholly on external audiences, are instead now editing content with an eye on domestic audiences.
To whit, overseas is being abandoned.
Future BlueSkies?
As yet, not many state media influencers have migrated over.
Will they? Almost certainly.
These are media professionals who are paid to post, work full-time, and have the pressure of an entire autocratic state behind them. They are fulfilling Xi’s call that: “China must amplify its voice so that the nation's message is heard overseas.”
The great prize of Twitter was never its number of users: it was who they were. Journalists, academics, and politicians… the Chinese state saw it as the fount of western hegemony, and an ideological battle place. If BlueSky becomes Twitter’s spiritual successor, it too will be a key mount to conquer, drown out, or destroy.
If state media does arrive in earnest, it may take time. It’s noticeable how loose BlueSky’s algorithm currently is, how difficult it is to game. No promoted tweets, blueticks or convoluted algorithm to manipulate here. BlueSky’s simplicity may yet be its best protection for its purity.
With its currently predominantly western liberal leaning, the platform also will be an uphill challenge for those looking to push overtly nationalistic viewpoints.
Even after years of honing their communication on Twitter, many state media accounts and their offshoots remain too abrasive, too anthema to mainstream ideals, and (potentially most damaging of all).. too dull to entice new broad audiences.
Many only became large on Twitter via brute-forcing the system — latterly via Musk’s paid-for-blueticks. And yet, even with this algorithmic help, it’s interesting how KPI’s for many in recent months have plateaued, or gone backwards.
Will they try? Yes. A number of bot accounts already litter BlueSky inboxes. Whether they ever will be activated, or harder yet, be effectual, is to be seen.
The perfect scenario is that state media learns from its past mistakes. Starts afresh. Prizes quality content and journalism, that connects with audiences.. over self-serving aggrandizement, or petty point-scoring over perceived slights.
If there is one thing that Twitter proved though, is that if BlueSky doesn’t work for it, the Chinese state is more than happy to help burn down a network with spam, bot networks and enshitiffication, than leave it for hostile-to-CPC thought to gather. The: “If I can’t have it, neither can you.”
In short, for now, enjoy BlueSky. Cloudy days may be coming.
Interesting insights. I think Chinese state media can hardly be blamed for burning down Twitter, though. They had maybe 0.1% of the responsibility. I also think that outside of China their points of view appeal to the illiberal, whether on the left or the right. For now such people are mostly staying away from BlueSky.
Interesting read. I like that you mentioned that there are people working within the system who do genuinely do it because they have a passion for media/journalism, because there are indeed many people like that. I’m also not sure that China & state media are entirely to blame for Twitter’s downfall though — I would be more inclined to suggest that state media merely contributed to it, or more likely, took advantage of changes that were being made to suit Musk’s own political ambitions with Trump & conservatism, such as the paid-for blue ticks & post-boosting. But there are other countries who have staged much more successful campaigns to amplify dis- and misinformation on Twitter in a much more sophisticated & subtle manner. Russia comes to mind. As long as the primary goal in China is to produce content that the 领导s approve of, any attempt to artificially reach Western audiences is bound to fail. I just hope that there are enough people still within the system who are aware of the negative impact that some state media accounts are now having — turning more people off China than anything else. And really, at the end of the day, if genuine, authentic human stories were being told, people might still give them a chance, even though they may be aware of the restrictions and censorship, because at the end of the day, if you are curious about China, you don’t want to hear a white person mansplain it to you. Instead, you’d want to hear from Chinese people themselves, understand what they think & how different groups within China see their country and the world. It is just sad that China’s foray into social media has distorted how people both within and outside of China perceive it. I also hope that if people do have a platform, they can think seriously about how best to use it. Stoking nationalism and divisiveness is not a responsible use of any platform, anywhere. People also need to be mindful of not emulating the behaviour or actions of the very people they oppose. Because actively encouraging one group of people to dislike or even hate another is precisely how wars and conflicts are started.