Twitter removes accounts related of China, Russia and Turkey
New Delhi, June 12 (HS) Twitter said on Friday it had removed thousands of accounts related to the respective governments of China, Russia and Turkey that were used for propaganda, misinformation and attack critics.
The American social media giant said that so far the largest such network was connected to China. It consisted of a highly engaged core of 23,750 accounts, augmented by more than 150,000 “amplifier” accounts. Turkey’s network composed of 7,340 accounts, while the Russian group consisted of 1,152 accounts. All accounts and their contents had been removed from Twitter and kept in an archive database for researchers.
Twitter said the Chinese network was detected with the help of systems that were used to remove government-linked accounts during huge and violent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong August last year. However, the current network failed to gain much attraction, but was involved in a series of manipulative and coordinated activities. Twitter wrote in its analysis that they were tweeting mainly in Chinese languages and propagating geopolitical views favourable to the Communist Party of China.
The Canadian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-based think-tank, analysed the dataset and said that the network was primarily engaged in spreading ideas within Chinese immigrants. Along with advancing Beijing’s statements on Hong Kong, the network also criticized Taiwan.
In its analysis, Twitter stated that Turkey’s network was traced in early 2020, which was aimed primarily at promoting domestic support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party. The Russian Twitter accounts were involved in cross-posting and promoting unsubstantiated content in a coordinated manner for political bosses, with the ruling party promoting United Russia and attacking political dissidents.
