There are always accounts on Twitter that do propaganda for certain countries. The company has now removed some of these accounts that have been shown to be related to the Russian state.
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Twitter removed a total of 373 accounts related to different countries that violated the tampering guidelines. This is what Twitter wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
Among the removed accounts are 100 accounts that, according to Twitter, have ties to Russia. Twitter was able to bring 69 accounts into connection with “Russian state actors”. Some accounts in this network are said to have spread propaganda by the Russian government, while others “focused on undermining trust and stability in the NATO alliance.”
Another 31 accounts from another network are said to have had connections with the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This is a so-called troll army that distributes propaganda on social networks on behalf of the Russian state. These accounts were primarily aimed at the US and the European Union.
Iranian and Armenian accounts also deleted
Twitter also removed 238 accounts that are said to have been operated from Iran. “These accounts had low engagement and no impact on public conversation,” writes Twitter. The social network had already deleted 130 Iranian accounts in October 2020 after receiving information from the FBI. According to Twitter, these accounts had planned to influence the public discussion about the presidential election campaign in the USA.
Twitter claims to have assigned 35 of the removed accounts to the Armenian government: They are said to have spread propaganda against Azerbaijan. “In some cases, the fake accounts purported to represent government and political figures in Azerbaijan, as well as news agencies who pretended to be operating in Azerbaijan,” wrote Twitter.
Twitter says it has archived all the accounts it removed so that researchers can analyze them.
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