Twitter has removed nearly 4,800 accounts it claimed were being employed by Iran to spread misinformation.
The accounts were deleted alongside others from several different groups as
Twitter tries to tackle interference.
It revealed the
deletions in an update
to its transparency report that aims to reveal the “spread of misinformation by insidious actors”.
Also removed were accounts used for Russian,
Catalonian and Venezuelan propaganda.
The 4,800 accounts weren’t a unified block, said Yoel Roth,
Twitter’s head of site integrity in a blog detailing its
actions.
Mr. Roth said one fraction, 1,666
accounts, cumulatively sent over 2 million tweets that sought to spread views backing Iran’s
policies and actions.
A smaller set, 248 in total, did similar
work however were
specifically aimed at skewing
discussions about Israel.
The biggest group, 2,865, used “false personas” to steer
conversations concerning social issues in Iran and elsewhere. These accounts were deleted in May.
Other accounts shut down included 130 set up by supporters of Catalonian independence, 33 run by a “commercial entity in Venezuela and 4 Russian accounts used by the infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA). The IRA is believed to possess sought to influence the
2016 U.S.A. presidential
election via social media.
Mr. Roth wrote:
“We believe that people and
organizations with the advantages of
institutional power and which consciously
abuse our services aren’t advancing healthy discourse however are actively working to undermine it.”
Mr. Roth said Twitter had collected all
the suspect accounts it had removed since starting its purge into a data set that it provided to researchers. Presently the data set contains over 30 million
tweets and more than one terabyte of images and video.