Twitter announces removal of thousands of accounts to fight against spread of disinformation
“Twitter Removes Thousands Of Accounts For Manipulating Its Platform”, 20 Sep 2019
… Twitter permanently suspended thousands of accounts in its ongoing effort to fight the spread of disinformation and political discord on its platform, the company announced… The Twitter accounts came from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Ecuador and China... Groups of suspended accounts were involved in various information campaigns, using tactics like spreading content through fake accounts and spamming through retweets.
The accounts were suspended for violating Twitter's policy on platform manipulation, which Twitter defines as large-scale aggressive or deceptive activity that misleads or disrupts people's social media activity. Twitter has been suspending or removing accounts linked to this sort of activity throughout the year. In August, the company suspended around 200,000 accounts it reported were used to discredit pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. So far, the companies' progress has been slow, said Nina Jankowicz, a global fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C. She said shutting down disinformation campaigns will take both tech-based solutions and educating people through digital literacy…
Twitter didn't just suspend or remove the accounts. The company also put many of them into an archive of millions of tweets the platform identified as part of "state-backed information operations."