Twitter Removes 30,000 Accounts Connected To State-Linked Information Ops

Continuing to fight spreaders of false and misleading content, Twitter says it has removed more than 30,000 accounts connected to state-linked information operations.

The accounts are attributable to the People’s Republic of China, Russia, and Turkey, Twitter announced on Friday.   

Every account and piece of content associated with each operation has been permanently removed from Twitter’s service.

To better understand the methods used by state actors, the company has also shared relevant data with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the Stanford Internet Observatory.

While the Chinese network was relatively new, Twitter said it consisted of 23,750 accounts.

The accounts were tweeting predominantly in Chinese languages and spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China, while continuing to push deceptive narratives about the political dynamics in Hong Kong.

However, most of these accounts were caught early, and thus failed to achieve considerable traction, according to Twitter.

The Russian network consisted of 1,152 accounts, most of which were promoting the United Russia party and attacking political dissidents, while the Turkish network consisted of 7,340 accounts and was amplifying political narratives aligned with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

To reduce the amount of false and misleading information on its platform, Twitter also recently began attaching warning labels to some of President Trump’s tweets.

In addition, it is suggesting that users better inform themselves about the articles they share on its platform, and plans to begin prompting people to read articles before sharing them with followers, which it suspects might cut down on suspect content.

Last year, Twitter unveiled an early draft of a new deepfake-fighting policy, which would allow the platform to place a notice next to tweets that share synthetic or manipulated media, as well as warn people before they share or like such tweets.

Late last year, Twitter also decided to stop running political ads.

 

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