[LorenPechtel]

Another factor here--China pushes a lot of propaganda domestically. Some of these tweets might be mindless repetition of the propaganda.

On the other hand, how many of those "ordinary people" are really part of the operation and simply complaining to create doubt?

[vkou]

Some? Given how much blatant propaganda I see in my Facebook feed, from very clearly real people, who very clearly believe the garbage they spew, I would say that the correct answer is most.

There's no shortage of people who will happily repeat the most inane, counterfactual political rhetoric. Don't assume they are paid shills, bots, or foreign spies.

[jacquesm]

'Useful idiots'.

[dmurray]

> Another factor here--China pushes a lot of propaganda domestically. Some of these tweets might be mindless repetition of the propaganda.

Sure, but some version of this goes for every country on every form of social media, with a little freedom over the "some" and the "might".

[duguxu]

I couldn't give concrete evidence to support nor oppose your arguments since I'm not a sociologist by any means. For any reasoning I could think up, or just observation I have to say, you might always find much more "another factors". How I wish you could speak a little Chinese so that you can investigate each pro-China account with social engineering and provide more proof on your conjecture.

However, I would like to translate a comment from that Weibo link (feel free to call it propaganda):

多个英文媒体对这次封号问题的报道反映出了西方社会及媒体对中国近几年来民意变化状态不了解的事实，也反映出了他们对中国民间广泛接受反分裂和支持政府价值观这一现象的不理解。依据他们的理论，共产主义国家的平民必然是反共的，当事实与他们深信不疑的理论相左时，他们选择发明事实来修正理论。

The coverage of this blocking issue by several English-language media reflects the fact that Western society and the media do not understand China's public opinion changes in recent years, and it also reflects their failure to understand the widespread acceptance of anti-secession and support for government values. According to their theory, the civilians in the communist countries must be anti-communist. When the facts are contrary to their belief in the theory, they choose to invent the facts to correct the theory.

And another comment:

we know them well, they know nothing about us.

But all in all, I can't make 100% sure they are not bots/brainwashed/part of the operation/mindless repetition... Any help to know the truth better instead of just speculations would be appreciated.