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KEY POINTS Twitter and Facebook have suspended numerous accounts that are believed to be tied to a state-backed disinformation campaign originating from inside China.

Facebook said it took down several pages, groups and accounts involved in the activity, while Twitter suspended 936 accounts associated with the misinformation campaign.

Twitter is also barring state-controlled news media entities from advertising on the platform.

Twitter and Facebook have suspended numerous accounts that they say are tied to a Chinese disinformation campaign against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Twitter said Monday it suspended 936 accounts likely related to the activity. The company said the disinformation campaign was designed to "sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political protest movement on the ground." Over the weekend, approximately 1.7 million anti-government protesters gathered in Hong Kong to rally peacefully against the Chinese government, which assumed rule of the former British colony in 1997. Protests erupted in June following a now-suspended bill that would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China.

"Based on our intensive investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation," the company said in a blog post. "Specifically, we have identified large clusters of accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related to the Hong Kong protests." Following Twitter's announcement, Facebook said in a blog post that it was acting on a tip from Twitter. Both companies face increased pressure to crack down on fake accounts and false content on their platforms in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, during which foreign actors used the sites to sow division around social issues. Twitter's latest move comes after social media site Pinboard warned days earlier that China was using Twitter to distribute posts from state media discrediting the protests. tweet Twitter is blocked in China, but many of the accounts it discovered were using virtual private networks, which encrypt and anonymize web traffic. The accounts it suspended represent the "most active" portion of the broader spam campaign, which it estimates to include about 200,000 accounts. As a result of the announcement, Twitter said it would no longer accept advertising from state-controlled news media entities.

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey are sworn-in for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing concerning foreign influence operations' use of social media platforms, on Capitol Hill, September 5, 2018 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The company didn't call out any specific news outlets in the post, but said it was including any entities that are "either financially or editorially controlled by the state." The organizations are still able to use the platform for communication, just not for advertisements. Twitter clarified that the updated policy doesn't apply to taxpayer-funded entities, such as independent public broadcasters. Facebook removed seven pages, three groups and five accounts in what it calls coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting Hong Kong. About 15,500 accounts followed one or more of the now-deactivated pages, while roughly 2,200 accounts joined at least one of the groups, Facebook said.