On March 7th, a Chinese blogger living in Canada revealed their personal experience of what appears to be a coordinated attack by the Chinese Communist Party’s internet army using algorithm tactics to target their account. This new method of attack no longer involves direct account suspension but exploits loopholes in platform recommendation algorithms. By using tactics like mass unfollowing and blocking by zombie accounts, the attackers precisely cut off the blogger’s ability to reach their audience and effectively put them in a state of “shadow banning.” A prominent content creator confirmed this and pointed out that this kind of sophisticated “opinion warfare” is escalating.
According to a post by the account “Finding心歸何處” on the social media platform X, the blogger officially started running the account in January 2026. By sharing personal experiences from post-China life and political viewpoints, they gradually built up their audience. The number of followers increased from 2800 on February 14th to 7800 on March 7th, with several posts going viral and receiving high engagement, including one post reaching 870,000 views, 1300 likes, and 200 comments.
However, behind the rising traffic lurked a crisis. The blogger discovered that their account was under a highly covert and systematic attack, summarized as a three-stage process: “embedded, dormant, detonation.”
The first stage, “embedded,” involved a sudden influx of “zombie accounts” with no profile pictures, zero posts, and minimal followers, which started following the account in large numbers. Due to the increase in followers, the blogger initially did not raise any alarm.
In the “dormant” stage, these accounts remained on the follower list for an extended period, with the algorithm associating their accounts with “low-quality social patterns.”
The “detonation” stage occurred when the blogger posted content related to the Chinese Communist Party or sensitive political topics during moments of high engagement. At this point, these dormant accounts collectively took action by unfollowing and blocking the blogger simultaneously. The blogger revealed that on the peak days, over thirty accounts executed blocking, all within Beijing’s working hours.
The success of this attack lies in the precise manipulation of the underlying logic of X platform’s recommendation algorithm.
The blogger’s analysis indicated that when a large number of followers suddenly leave during peak content engagement, the platform’s algorithm may misinterpret the content as “extremely offensive” or “containing false information,” triggering an automatic halt in content distribution to non-followers.
Simultaneously, in the algorithm’s weighting system, being actively blocked by numerous users serves as a strong negative signal of account violation. A sudden collective blocking can place the account into a “search blacklist,” making it difficult for others to find it even through active searches of the account ID.
This double blow eventually lowered the account’s reputation score, leading to a dramatic decline in post engagement, resulting in what is known as “shadow banning.”
The covert nature of this model lies in its ability to evade regulation – unfollowing and blocking are considered basic user rights, making it challenging for platforms to define them as “malicious activities,” thus providing natural compliance cover for the perpetrators.
Additionally, the sudden disappearance of traffic can easily lead the blogger to self-doubt and creative fatigue, achieving a “voiceless” outcome on a psychological level, with low costs and significant effects.
In response to the disclosure, the host of the opinion program “文昭談古論今” on X platform, Wen Zhao, noted that he had observed this phenomenon two years ago and highlighted that the Chinese Communist Party’s internet army has been studying algorithms of major platforms to limit the reach of anti-communist bloggers by “tampering algorithms and triggering platform review mechanisms,” while simultaneously supporting official propaganda accounts to guide the flow of public opinion, resulting in a dual effect of “strangling dissemination, and economic impact.”
Wen Zhao further pointed out that with the proliferation of AI tools, the threshold for such large-scale manipulation has significantly decreased, making it more cost-effective and efficient. He mentioned that since the second half of last year, many content creators on the X platform and YouTube have experienced unusually low traffic attributed to similar operations.
He also specifically mentioned that in recent years, some “people with poor ethics and shallow knowledge” have risen abnormally as internet celebrities, with traces of traffic manipulation behind them.
Other observers also commented on this issue. A netizen named “定中” pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party not only uses a large number of low-quality internet troops but also has a professional technical team coordinating. Referring to a case, he claimed that a blogger who had been running an account for a year and accumulated 80,000 followers was permanently banned due to reports from internet troops.
Another netizen named “Jack” analyzed the situation from a structural perspective, stating that Western platforms, based on conventional civilized order, have inherent blind spots when facing systematic unconventional manipulation like that of the Chinese Communist Party, making it difficult to effectively respond.
Faced with the above attacks, the blogger and industry insiders have proposed several response strategies but admitted that the existing methods are somewhat limited.
In terms of account maintenance, the blogger suggested regularly manually cleaning out “empty accounts” (those without profile pictures, no posts, or accounts with very short registration periods) to reduce the risk of being associated with low-quality patterns by algorithms. Additionally, when under concentrated attack, increasing the posting frequency and engaging with followers can counteract negative signals with genuine active interactions.
Wen Zhao further recommended swiftly clearing the comment section and blocking suspicious accounts to prevent them from forming connections within the account and triggering the platform’s content distribution halt.
On the content strategy level, several individuals emphasized the importance of maintaining stable content quality and enhancing audience loyalty. The basic traffic and positive feedback provided by loyal followers are crucial defenses against internet army manipulation.