Twitter Removes Thousands Of State-Backed Accounts Concerning Misinformation

Twitter has recently removed up to thousands of state-backed accounts that are reportedly spreading misinformation concerning campaigns. According to a transparency report published on September 20, the famous social networking service confirmed that it deleted 265 accounts in Spain, 273 accounts in Egypt and the UAE, 4,248 accounts in the United Arab Emirates, 06 accounts in Saudi Arabia, and 1,019 accounts in Ecuador.

In addition, among 200,000 accounts in Hong Kong and China, up to 4,301 ones were removed due to their relation to the recent protests in Hong Kong.

This move is one of the latest efforts of Twitter in tackling state-backed accounts delivering fake news on its platform. Three months ago, in June, the company banned about 4,800 accounts that were allegedly relating to the Iranian government. Last month, it removed approximately 1,000 accounts which were backed up by the Chinese government to navigate public opinion in Hong Kong protests.

Besides, Twitter didn’t aim at state-backed fake news but it also issued new policies to prevent advertising from news outlets controlled by any state. This ban is applied even when the news is not the misinformation.

As per Facebook, the US tech giant also deleted accounts concerning fake news in Spain. Both of these platforms removed a series of accounts linked with Partido Popular (the People’s Party in Spain). According to a report from the Financial Times, it is among the few situations in which a social media company has partnered with a political party in Western Europe to prevent disinformation campaigns.