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Twitter suspends 130 false accounts related to the independence movement – Information operations on Twitter: principles, process, and disclosure

June 15, 2019

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Home » Content » Twitter suspends 130 false accounts related to the independence movement – Information operations on Twitter: principles, process, and disclosure

Spain (130 accounts) Earlier this year, we suspended 130 fake accounts originating in Spain. These accounts were directly associated with the Catalan independence movement, specifically Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. They were primarily engaged in spreading content about the Catalan Referendum. The network includes fake accounts which appear to have been created with the intent to inorganically influence the conversation in politically advantageous ways. Setting up fake accounts is a violation of the Twitter Rules, full stop.

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The platform has explained that this decision, taken by its integrity unit, is due to its “responsibility to protect the integrity of the public conversation”.

Agencies

Madrid – Thursday, 06/13/2019 | Updated on 06/14/2019 at 10:02 CEST

Twitter app on the screen of a phone // REUTERS

Twitter has eliminated 130 profiles on its platform, which it has identified as false accounts, related to the independence movement in Catalonia and with ERC, considering that they “tried to influence public conversation”.

Twitter has updated this Thursday its database of transparency of accounts associated with “information operations supported by States”, which violate its policies and have been eliminated, with the addition of six new databases: three from Iran, one from Russia, another one from Venezuela and another from Spain.

In the case of Spain, Twitter has suspended 130 false accounts “directly associated” with the independence movement, and specifically with ERC, which distributed content on the 1-O referendum.

The 130 eliminated accounts made up a network of false accounts that “seem to have been created with the intention of influencing public conversation in politically advantageous ways and in a non-organic way”, according to Twitter.

The platform has explained that this decision, taken by its integrity unit, is due to its “responsibility to protect the integrity of the public conversation”.

It has also alluded to its content policies, among which are the manipulation of the platform and the ‘spam’, the coordinated activity, the false accounts, the activity attributed to other accounts, the distribution of ‘hacked’ materials and the evasion of the blockade.

Accounts eliminated in Iran, Russia or Venezuela

Likewise, the social network has also shared data on the elimination of three groups of accounts in Iran, up to a total of 4,779 profiles, with international news manipulated in favor of the Iranian regime, others on Israel and a third group for passing themselves off as other people to influence the conversation.

Among the remaining accounts eliminated are 33 from Venezuela related to cases of manipulation focused on the outside, as well as other four Russian accounts related to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), Russian cyber-espionage agency.

https://www.elperiodico.com/es/politica/20190613/twitter-suspende-130-cuentas-falsas-relacionadas-con-el-independentismo-7503850

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/information-ops-on-twitter.html