| | | Twitter removes 5,000 bot accounts promoting 'Russiagate hoax'
BY ZACK BUDRYK - 04/23/19 11:48 AM EDT
Twitter this week removed more than 5,000 bot accounts that called special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation a hoax.
The move by Twitter reportedly came Sunday night, after Thursday's release of the highly anticipated Mueller report, and was first reported by NBC News.
The accounts do not appear connected to Russia, but instead have ties to a social media operation that previously promoted messages sympathetic to Saudi Arabia's government, according to NBC.
"We suspended a network of accounts and others associated with it for engaging in platform manipulation — a violation of the Twitter Rules," a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill.
"While our investigations are ongoing, in cases such as this, attribution is difficult. If we do have reasonable evidence to support state-backed activity, we will disclose the accounts as part of our information operations archive," the spokesperson added.
Most of the deleted accounts had posted about 30 times since their creation in November and December, NBC reported. Nearly all of them attacked the media for using the “Russiagate hoax” to undermine President Trump, and often lifted language from other pro-Trump accounts’ tweets without attribution, according to NBC.
Many of the banned accounts frequently engaged, through likes or retweets, with @TheGlobus, an account purporting to be a news service but which, until last month, primarily posted memes and tweets praising Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Thousands of the accounts deleted over the weekend only liked tweets from @TheGlobus and no other accounts, according to NBC.
Before the rebrand, the account was named @ArabianVeritas, describing itself on its now-abandoned Instagram account as “an initiative that aims to spread the truth about Saudi Arabia and the Middle East through social media engagement.”
“Whether this is a government or a pro-Saudi influence firm, it shows how easy it is to do and that there’s no cost or consequences for it,” Clint Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told NBC News. “These are made to influence Americans or western audiences.”
The New York Times reported in October that the Saudi government is suspected to have contacted an employee at Twitter to help the kingdom monitor dissidents’ accounts. Twitter fired the man in December 2015 without determining whether he had given company data to Saudi Arabia.
thehill.com
President Trump spent a significant part of his Tuesday meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey complaining that he had lost followers, The Washington Post reported, citing a person with direct knowledge of the conversation.
The president reportedly said that he believed Twitter was deliberately removing his followers and that he knew other conservatives who also had lost followers.
Twitter has said follower counts can change as it works to crack down on bots and get rid of fake accounts. Dorsey reportedly emphasized this in the meeting and noted that he has also lost followers as a result.
The Hill has reached out to the White House and Twitter for comment.
Trump previously joined other Republicans in accusing social media companies of censoring or working to limit conservative messaging.
Ahead of the meeting, Trump bashed the company in a pair of tweets.
"Very discriminatory, hard for people to sign on. Constantly taking people off list. Big complaints from many people. Different names-over 100 [million]. But should be much higher than that if Twitter wasn’t playing their political games," Trump tweeted Tuesday morning.
Trump then celebrated his meeting with Dorsey on Twitter, calling it "great" and saying he looks forward to "keeping an open dialogue."
"Lots of subjects discussed regarding their platform, and the world of social media in general," Trump tweeted.
A spokesperson for Twitter called the meeting "constructive" in a statement.
Trump is extremely active on Twitter, posting multiple times each day. Last year, a judge ruled that Trump cannot block users on the social media website based on their political beliefs.
[ Basically he spends all day on twitter and watching cable news, taking regular golf breaks. He's the hardest working President in history ... just ask him. ]
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said blocking people with differing opinions is viewpoint discrimination and a violation of the First Amendment.
thehill.com |
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