It informed that all these accounts were linked to several distinct operations, belonging to various countries. Besides, this information was shared with research bodies of various institutions.
Twitter Banning Accounts
Though the major purpose of most social media platforms is connecting people, most use them for spreading information on various issues. And this could be manipulative sometimes. Thus, it’s the responsibility of such social platforms to regulate content. In this pursuit, Twitter-like any other social platform will be observing closely on misinformation being spread on its table. And be regulating them by applying operational restrictions, or banning the concerned accounts completely for good. And it did again, recently. Twitter in a blog post revealed banning about 3,465 state-backed accounts, in its pursuit of limiting the manipulative information on its platform. Counties to which such these banned accounts were linked to include – China, Mexico, Russia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Venezuela. The top among them, China with over 2,000 banned accounts had seen amplifying the narratives of Chinese Communist Party, regarding the treatment of Uyghur population in Xinjiang. The next country is Uganda, with about 418 banned accounts that were seen performing an inauthentic activity to support the removal of presidential incumbent Museveni. And at the No.3 spot, it’s Venezuela with about 277 linked accounts spreading the content supporting its presiding government removal. Besides banning them for misinformation, Twitter shared this data with relevant data bodies like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Cazadores de Fake News, and the Stanford Internet Observatory, for research activities. This action comes amidst the change of Twitter’s CEO, as Jack Dorsey stepped down from the position this week.
