Authors Michiel van Hulten
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So here's the thread on Huawei I promised yesterday. It seems Huawei is using social media black ops tactics to try to convince policy-makers in Belgium that it can be trusted to build 5G networks. 🤨
My attention was piqued this weekend when I saw a promoted tweet by someone called Mike Bai in my timeline. His timeline suggests he normally tweets in English, but this tweet was in poor Dutch. I've seen many promoted tweets from him since.
The tweet calls for an end to the "politics of hide and seek" and for "seleciton criteria to be exposed" (literal English translation of the poor Dutch). The tweet links to an article entitled "Belgium and 5G - a complicated relationship". So far no textual reference to Huawei.
A check on LinkedIn reveals that Mike is "President of Strategy Marketing Western Europe" for Huawei Technologies.
Mike is also, according to his Twitter page, "one of the Top 100 #Global #ThoughLeaders and #Influencers to follow in 2020 by @MagazineAwards". The tweet was pinned to his profile on Sunday but has since been unpinned. Link to tweet: https://t.co/r7fk8yo83H
My attention was piqued this weekend when I saw a promoted tweet by someone called Mike Bai in my timeline. His timeline suggests he normally tweets in English, but this tweet was in poor Dutch. I've seen many promoted tweets from him since.
The tweet calls for an end to the "politics of hide and seek" and for "seleciton criteria to be exposed" (literal English translation of the poor Dutch). The tweet links to an article entitled "Belgium and 5G - a complicated relationship". So far no textual reference to Huawei.
A check on LinkedIn reveals that Mike is "President of Strategy Marketing Western Europe" for Huawei Technologies.
Mike is also, according to his Twitter page, "one of the Top 100 #Global #ThoughLeaders and #Influencers to follow in 2020 by @MagazineAwards". The tweet was pinned to his profile on Sunday but has since been unpinned. Link to tweet: https://t.co/r7fk8yo83H
Really proud and excited to be named one of the Top 100 #Global #ThoughLeaders and #Influencers to follow in 2020 by @MagazineAwards !
— Mike BAI (@Mike_IMC) October 28, 2020
Thanks a lot for the great recognition. \U0001f64f\U0001f64f\U0001f64f#TECH4ALLhttps://t.co/PaQz31hNM3
Yesterday I did a thread on how Huawei is trying to manipulate Belgian policy audiences with a fake online ecosystem ahead of a key 5G decision. (https://t.co/ViIp7X5KsN) Huawei did not take kindly to my research.
Mike Bai, the "President of Strategy Marketing Western Europe" for Huawei doubled down and tagged me and the organisations listed in my profile in a promoted (!) tweet. It's still doing the rounds now.
But who is Mike Bai? An analysis of his Twitter account by Botometer rates him a dubious 2.2/5 (by comparison, I rate 0.4, where 0 is best). @villaraco points out that he gained 800K followers in 9 months: https://t.co/YfoVaVNq2y
Bai's sudden and massive online presence for Huawei started at the exact same time as the fake ecosystem of blogs and websites started being built, in March 2020. I can find no job history for him pre-Huawei, starting in March of this year.
I did find another (?) Mike Bai. The other Mike Bai authored a blog that posts Chinese state propaganda about things like the Covid-19 outbreak not originating in China. I won't link to the blog as not 100% sure it's same person, but here's a screenshot of part of the text.
So here's the thread on Huawei I promised yesterday. It seems Huawei is using social media black ops tactics to try to convince policy-makers in Belgium that it can be trusted to build 5G networks. \U0001f928 pic.twitter.com/noZKM13RuD
— Michiel van Hulten (@mvanhulten) December 22, 2020
Mike Bai, the "President of Strategy Marketing Western Europe" for Huawei doubled down and tagged me and the organisations listed in my profile in a promoted (!) tweet. It's still doing the rounds now.
But who is Mike Bai? An analysis of his Twitter account by Botometer rates him a dubious 2.2/5 (by comparison, I rate 0.4, where 0 is best). @villaraco points out that he gained 800K followers in 9 months: https://t.co/YfoVaVNq2y
Totally agree. Seems like a total fake account. For a person with 800k followers with an account created in only 9 months ago, one would expect that it would be a very important or famous person. But a news search with his name is rather disappointing.
— Javier Villaraco \U0001f3f3\ufe0f\u200d\U0001f308 (@villaraco) December 22, 2020
Bai's sudden and massive online presence for Huawei started at the exact same time as the fake ecosystem of blogs and websites started being built, in March 2020. I can find no job history for him pre-Huawei, starting in March of this year.
I did find another (?) Mike Bai. The other Mike Bai authored a blog that posts Chinese state propaganda about things like the Covid-19 outbreak not originating in China. I won't link to the blog as not 100% sure it's same person, but here's a screenshot of part of the text.